How to Make a Miniature Boba Milk Tea
Craft a realistic miniature boba bubble tea cup complete with polymer clay tapioca pearls, tinted resin milk tea, whipped cream topping, and a tiny straw.
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🧰 Required Tools & Equipment
- ✓ UV resin curing lamp
- ✓ Fine-point craft tweezers
- ✓ Silicone mixing cup
- ✓ Wooden toothpicks
- ✓ Precision craft scissors
📦 Materials & Supplies
- ✓ Miniature clear acrylic cup (1.5–2.5 cm tall)
- ✓ Black polymer clay
- ✓ Clear UV resin
- ✓ Brown and white acrylic paint
- ✓ Plastic miniature straw or cut plastic toothpick sleeve
- ✓ White lightweight air-dry clay or decoden whip cream
⚠️ Safety Checkpoints & Warnings
- • Wear nitrile gloves to prevent uncured UV resin from contacting bare skin.
- • Ensure adequate room ventilation while curing UV resin under the UV lamp.
- • Never look directly into an active UV curing lamp.
📋 Step-by-Step Guide (5 Steps)
Roll Miniature Boba Pearls
Pinch off minuscule specks of black polymer clay and roll each between your thumb and index finger into tiny 1 mm round balls. Make approximately 15 to 20 uniform micro-spheres. Bake according to clay package directions or use unbaked if immediately setting in resin.
- • A neat cluster of 15-20 smooth, uniform 1 mm black spheres resting on the work surface.
- • Making the pearls too large to fit realistically inside the miniature cup.
Position Boba Pearls in Miniature Cup
Use fine-point tweezers to pick up the black pearls one by one and drop them into the bottom of the clear mini cup. Arrange them so they form a dense, even layer filling the bottom quarter of the cup.
- • Clear cup bottom is filled with a dense, clustered layer of black pearls occupying 25% of total height.
- • Dropping all pearls in at once, causing air pockets between the cup wall and pearls.
Mix Milk Tea Resin
Squeeze a small dime-sized pool of clear UV resin into your silicone mixing cup. Dip the tip of a toothpick into brown acrylic paint and another into white paint, then blend micro-dots of both into the resin until it turns a smooth, semi-translucent caramel-tan color.
- • Evenly blended, semi-translucent light caramel-brown resin with no streaks or undissolved paint clumps.
- • Adding too much opaque paint, which blocks UV light and prevents resin from curing completely.
Pour and Cure the Tea Layer
Carefully transfer the tinted resin into the miniature cup using a toothpick guide, filling it to roughly 80% capacity. Place the cup under a UV lamp for 60 to 90 seconds until the resin surface is rock-solid and tack-free to the touch.
- • Cup filled to 80% height with solid, glossy caramel resin showing dark boba pearls visible at the bottom.
- • Overfilling the cup to the brim, leaving no room for the whipped cream topping.
Add Whipped Cream and Straw
Roll a tiny pinch of white lightweight air-dry clay into a tapered spiral and adhere it to the top of the cured resin to mimic whipped cream. Cut a 1.5 cm section of miniature plastic straw with scissors at a 45-degree angle, then push the cut end diagonally through the cream into the cup.
- • White ruffled swirl atop the cup with a miniature colorful straw protruding diagonally from the center.
- • Cutting the straw too long, making the miniature top-heavy and prone to falling over.
Credit: inspired by an original tutorial by The Koalas JJ — watch the original on YouTube.
Don’t have everything?
- No UV resin curing lamp? Direct sunlight (requires 10-15 minutes of direct sun exposure)
- No Clear UV resin? Clear craft glue mixed with brown watercolor (requires 24 hours to air dry)
- No Miniature clear acrylic cup? Cut bottom 2 cm of a clear plastic drinking straw or disposable plastic pipette bulb