Craft Religious Medals with Kids

This is so easy to do and my kids have been loving it! On May 1, Divine Mercy Sunday, Pope John Paul II is being beatified! 🙂 So this week, we’ve been making Divine Mercy medals and JPII crucifixes!

Divine Mercy Religious Medal
 

This is easier to do than it looks. All you need is polymer clay and a few religious medals. You can get polymer clay (like Sculpey or Fimo) from a craft store, or even Walmart, and it’s not that expensive. You can either order some religious medals, or you can get them from your local Catholic shop. Every Catholic shop I’ve been in has a set of these drawers with cheap religious medals. (Be sure to also check the rosary pieces section, which is usually in a different place, for crucifixes).

Religious Medal Shelf

To make our molds, I used scrap clay that had all the colors mixed up because it’s basically useless for anything else. Just press your object in and remove it, then bake according to package directions.

Marbeled clay with cross in it
Marbeled clay and silver clay

After you’ve baked your mold, you’re ready to go. To prevent the clay from sticking to our mold, I dusted a little bit of flour with a paintbrush. Have your kids stick the clay in, and pull it back out. Voila! Instant religious medal! I used the same kind of clay for both the mold and the ‘medals’, but I’m sure there are other materials that would work.

Marbeled Clay Imprint of Crucifix

 

Marbeled Clay Imprint of Religious Medal

Just trim around the edges with a knife (a job for mom, not kids) and then bake according to package directions. Here is a picture of me indeed letting my 5-year-old do her own cutting- lol!

Cutting Around Edges

Don’t forget to poke a hole with a paper clip, or add a medal jewelry ring thingy before baking if you want to use it as a bead. Here are some different Divine Mercy Medals we made:

Post continues after this brief information about the Catholic Icing Monthly Membership


Monthly Liturgical Membership

Catholic Liturgical Monthly Membership

Perfect for families! Each month you gain access to printable activity pages, crafts, home altar pieces, and more.
 
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DIY Religious Medals

We started with solid colors, and we tried pressing in glass seed beads for the red and blue rays. Then we made “marbled” religious medals by mixing some of the colors together before pressing it into the mold. These were all fun experiments! I also made these multi colored ones with rays by rolling little bits of red and blue clay and sticking them into the mold first. See the pictures:

DIY Religious Medal
Religious Medal Imprinting
Religious Medal Imprinting

Alternatively, you could paint your “medals” after they are baked with some acrylic craft paint. Lydia made her Divine Mercy “medals” purple. I try not to stifle her creativity. 😉

You could do this with any religious medal your heart desires to make! When we were done, we made ours into Divine Mercy Chaplets. You can either make easy chaplets from pipe cleaners and pony beads, or you can get really crafty with your polymer clay and make your own beads! It’s totally doable! 🙂

Diy Rosaries

 

DIY Rosary
You can find more Divine Mercy Crafts and links here, including praying the Divine Mercy chaplet in song!
 

More Divine Mercy Resources for Kids