New bride, Kim, asked me to make clay lips and mustaches like the ones by The Wedding Chicks for her photo booth. I like that clay props are more durable than paper, plus I’ve never worked with clay before so it was going to be a fun experiment. 

Photo Props Materials/Tools:

• Clay (about 3-4 mustaches/lips per block)
• Toothpicks
• Wooden sticks
• Hot glue gun
• Optional: Mustaches/lips templates (I downloaded templates from Easy Makes Me Happy and Tiffany Kelley Photography to create different shapes.)
• Optional: parchment paper/plastic wrap for work area

1. Roll a segment of clay into a ball and flatten on a flat surface. Optional: use parchment paper or plastic wrap to prevent the clay from sticking to the work surface.

2. Mustaches – Use two balls for “The Captain” and “The Villain” type mustaches. Form into two leaves and pinch together. Form longer leaves before curling ends.

Lips – Pinch and pull two sides into a lip shape. Push a dent into the top.

Optional: place a piece of parchment paper on top of the mustaches/lips to smooth out lumps/fingerprints.

3. Use the toothpick to draw hair/lip lines as desired.

4. Use the templates as guides for shaping the remaining balls into mustaches and lips.

5. Preheat oven to 225°F. Place mustaches and lips on pyrex and bake for 20 minutes. Let cool. Note: clay does not expand.

6. Attach the wooden stick to the side of the mustaches and lips using a hot glue gun.

Yay for disguises!

Tips:

• Start with the lightest color clay. (I used black, then pink—even though I washed my hands and cleaned the area, specks of black kept appearing on the pink clay.)
• Allocate about 10-12 minutes to form each mustache. (I was able to make 10 during my flight from Austin to Long Beach, but I was being slow and had limited space.)
• There was no noticeable difference between the Sculpey and FIMO clay, except the FIMO Soft was definitely easier, but messier to use. Sculpty has more color choices while the FIMO Effect has glitter. (I went with mostly FIMO clay because it was on sale for 50% off at Joann’s.)
• 3 blocks of black FIMO Soft, 2 blocks of red FIMO Effect, and 2 blocks of pink Sculpey made 15 mustaches, 8 lips, a bowtie, a pair of glasses, and one monocle. Way more than was needed so I only put out 16 of the mustaches and lips.