Clay Doily Hearts

For Valentine's day this year we have made a clay heart garland which has been printed to look like a vintage doily. I really loved the pine cone garland we made at Christmas and have to say I really quite miss it, so we have decided to have a seasonal garland throughout the year filled with craft items and memories.

We rolled our clay out and pressed an old plastic doily that used to belong to my grandmother into it to give us the wonderful pattern. We used a cookie cutter to give us the heart shapes, put a hole in the top for the string and left them to dry.

We also made a larger one as a gift for my eldest daughter who has had heart surgery this week.

We gave them a red undercoat and left them to dry for a little longer.

To pick out the highlights in a lighter colour gives the heart a vintage doily look, and we have lightly brushed over the red hearts with a white paint. Then finished with a coat of varnish to give it shine and a little durability.

So after threading onto a rustic natural string this is what our Valentine garland looks like. Hopefully it's a lovely keepsake that we can bring out year after year and enjoy. The special one for my daughter was finished off with a red ribbon.

We wish you a speedy recovery and hope you are soon feeling much better xx

Happy New Year 2012

Not the sort of Happy New Year photograph you usually see... but this calendula photograph was taken in my herb bed this morning, nature's fireworks bursting through. Just a quick post to wish you all a Happy New year and to thank-you for reading.  We have been so busy here that I haven't had the time to write as much as I wanted to and many things went unfinished.  So will quickly update you on some of the things we have done.

As the children really enjoyed working with clay and making the Autumn leaf bowls we decided to buy a large bag from the art shop. Some of it was put to good use making tree decorations, the children used dough cutters to cut out their shapes and these were then painted and varnished.

I also made some and stamped words on them with our metal stamps before painting them with metallic purple paint. I stamped our names on some to use on the crackers and as gift labels but totally forgot to use them in all the excitement. As shown in previous posts we made some of the tree decorations, this is something we always do to create special memories for the children. We also made all of our Christmas cards, this year we kept most of them very simple due to time limitations.

 The children had a lot of fun making our chocolate Yule log and home made sweets, this year we made marshmallow snowmen, fruit and nut chocolate bark and marzipan snowballs. A lot of time was spent making things for the doll house that my husband made for our daughter, I was in charge of interior design, will try to remember to post pictures here soon. I am a little relieved to have a calmness return to the house now that the celebrations are over and the decorations have come down.

I have made a start on my 'sort of' new year's resolutions already, by making my own toothpaste. I never make huge resolutions that are so overwhelming you fail after a couple of weeks and end up feeling bad about yourself. I only make small achievable aims and when these have been completed will then make another goal and another, right throughout the year, this way there are lots of small successes. The feel good factor from this is better and when you look back on everything you have done it is quite like a big resolution anyway just taken in small steps and without any stress.

Hope you all have a wonderful 2012.

Autumn Leaf Bowls

Just time to fit in one last craft the children have been doing for Autumn before the season changes, this time we have made leaf shaped clay pots or candle holders. My eldest children made some like these when they were very small and I can remember some children making them when I was at school. So we thought we would have a go using a pack of air drying clay after seeing some recently which reminded me of how pretty the bowls looked.

First thing we did was print and cut out some leaf templates and chose one each, then we rolled out the clay to the required thickness. We rolled ours out quite thin but I think if we make some more I will leave the clay slightly thicker as I was terrified that the children would break them.

My husband put the leaf template onto the clay and cut round them all and we added a few leaf details onto the clay. For more realistic looking veins you could press real leaves into the clay and cut around them.

The cut out leaf was then placed onto a bowl, so that it curled around it and left to completely dry, we used several different sized bowls so that each leaf had a unique shape. There is a lot of waiting to dry in this craft so a little patience is required.

After the clay has dried it was possible to paint the bottom of the leaf while it was still on the bowl, we used acrylic paint for this. After the painted base has dried you can remove your leaf bowl and paint the inside, we started to paint them in Autumnal colours but the children decided to add extra colours to the inside of the bowls.

This is what we ended up with, after adding a little extra sparkle as it is coming up to Christmas. My daughter's one is mostly red, my son has added a little blue glitter and I painted mine red and lightly sprayed it with gold paint. They are not quite finished yet as we will be adding a couple of layers of varnish to make them a little stronger and easier to clean.

It looks very Autumnal with a candle in it, although we are now seeing the start of Winter. My son also made some casts of dinosaur footprints with the left over clay, just like the fossil ones.