My First Cold Porcelain Hand Crafted Flowers

Hello folks, When i made the first batch of Cold Porcelain Clay, i tried my hand at making some roses,lilies and other random flowers.
Do check out How to make cold porcelain at home in this post and
how to add color to the cold porcelain dough here.

In most of the forums i read about the flowers/dolls getting cracks while drying. Thank God my first trial at making the flowers was successful.
I think the most important part is to knead the dough , and roll it in between the fingers before we make anything out of it. All these flowers were crafted without any tools. With practice the roses can be perfected.
In my future posts i will do a tutorial on roses. Since it was a trial i didn't take ani images while making them.

Hand crafted beautiful porcelain roses

Cold Porcelain Roses

Cold Porcelain Flowers before drying

Cold Porcelain beautiful roses

Cold Porcelain random flowers

Cold Porcelain Mini Flowers

Cold Porcelain Flowers

Cold Porcelain Flowers

Whatever you make from this clay, will shrink by 15-20 % when air-dried. So keep this in mind while making flowers or anything. Some of my flowers are so tiny that i can't handle them in my hand. To seal the flowers i coated them with 1:1 of fevicol and water, since i did not have any varnish or mod-podge with me. After the coating dries off the flowers become very hard and durable.

So how did you find my Cold Porcelain Roses/flowers?

Thanks for taking time to go through this post.Will you try to make some at home? Do let me know in the comments section below. Your opinion matters, any suggestions are welcome. 

How to- color Cold Porcelain clay

In one of my posts i have penned down a tutorial to make Cold Porcelain clay at home. If you haven't checked it yet visit this link.
In this post i will show you step by step procedure of - How to add color to Cold Porcelain Clay.


Materials you will need:

• Cold Porcelain Clay
• Acrylic color tube of your choice. (Oil color can also be used)

             

Procedure:

Step 1:

• After allowing the clay to settle for a day in the refrigerator , take out some of the clay.
• Press and roll it between your palms. The clay should become soft.
• Take a little acrylic/oil color onto the clay.

                                           

Step 2:

• Roll the clay between your finger tips until the color spreads to the whole of clay.

                                 

Keep kneading the clay untill the color spreads uniformly

Keep rolling the clay until the color spreads to the clay uniformly and it feels soft in your hand.

                                

Magenta colored Cold Porcelain

Add more color to the clay until you get your desired color. 

TIP: Remember cold porcelain dries to a thicker color, So add as desired.

Green colored Cold porcelain

One can add color at the time of kneading the dough when making the cold porcelain or after making crafts. But colored clay has low shelf life. So color only the part you will put to use. Store the colored clay in air-tight container and Refrigerate. Knead the clay/dough well before you put it to use. Good kneading is the key to making no-crack clay crafts. 

Do check out another post on cold porcelain flowers.

       So how did you like my tutorial on How to- color Cold Porcelain Clay. Let me know in the comments section below. Looking forward to hear from you. 

                                                            Thank You!!!

My Newspaper Baskets

Hi as promised here i am back with the newspaper baskets i made at home. In case you didn't , do check out my post on a newspaper basket making tutorial.

Newspaper baskets

Newspaper basket

Newspaper baskets 

Newspaper baskets to store chargers and stationary

Basket to store keys and change.Made for my husband

A basket with a lid for storing chargers and other cords

Yet to be colored Newspaper basket

In the making newspaper baskets

Newspaper baskets for ipods and smartphones

Newspaper basket kitchen organizers

Dressing accessories Basket

Newspaper basket organizers

From magazine holders to paper curtains, baskets and much more, there are endless ways of recycling newspapers. Do give it a try and i would love to ear from you.

How did you find my baskets? Do let me know in the comments section. Your appreciation is important to me. Hope you had a great time reading this post. Thank you!!!

Air-Dry Cold Porcelain Clay- A step by step procedure

While looking for paper mache clay ideas, i stumbled opon Cold Porcelain clay and was quite amused by its varied uses right from crafting flowers to baskets to dolls and many more. After going through most of the videos online about this clay i decided its time to make some at home.

When air- dried the final product has a natural porcelain kind of glow on it, hence the name Cold Porcelain. There are two methods

•  Stove top Method
• Microwave Method

 In this post i will show the first method.

Things you will need:

• Corn Flour ---- 1 cup
• Fevicol SH ----1 cup ( used for woodworking, one can use fevicol MR or Elmer's white glue)
• Baby Oil    ---- 2 Tbs
• Glycerin ---- 1 Tbs
• Synthetic Vinegar / Lime juice --- 1 Tbs
• Water if you glue is too thick
• Ponds / Vaseline Moisturizer
• Non-Stick pan/ Spatula

Things you need

Step:1

• Take the Non-stick pan, Add one cup of fevicol/white glue , 2Tbsp of baby oil, 1Tbsp of  Glycerin and 1Tbps of lime juice/Vinegar. Mix properly.
• Add 1 cup of Corn Flour to the above mixture. Mix them all to get a proper consistency. 
• If the mixture is too thick add little water and mix again properly.

Mix all ingredients thoroughly

 Step 2:

• Keep the pan on the stove in low flame. 
• Keep stirring continuously.The mixture gets clumpy fast so be careful, keep flame low and keep stirring.

Keep stirring continuously

Step 3:

The mixture gets thicker

• The mixture slowly turns thicker and thicker. Keep stirring.

• Within some 8 minutes it would look like a mashed potato and a lump kind of forms at the center. Its time to switch off the flame.

Mashed Potato like consistency

Step 4:

• Add a little moisturizer to your palm and to the table top where you intend to knead the dough.
• Take out the mashed mixture form the pan and keep on the moisturized place.
• Start kneading the mixture , add a little flour if it feels sticky. The key to making good porcelain clay is to knead it until it becomes cool.

Knead the mixture to a dough like consistency

Dust a little corn flour if its sticking around

Cold Porcelain Dough

Step 5:

• Take a clean polythene cover, add a little moisturizer to its interior surface. Roll the clay as shown in above pic and keep it inside the polythene cover.
• Fold the cover properly so that no air is left inside,  Tie the cover with a clip to make it air-tight.
• Store in the Refrigerator for A DAY. 

Step 6:

• To add color to the clay, add a little acrylic or oil color of your choice and knead the dough properly.
• Once you take out the clay from Refrigerator , knead it properly before you make anything out of it, otherwise it would break while drying.
• Sculpt your favorite character or Flowers and let them air-dry for few hours to days depending on the thickness of the form.
• Seal it with a clear acrylic varnish or a glossy Mod-Podge. The forms will be as hard as rock once they are dried. 

TIP 1: Add a little White Tempera paint while mixing all the ingredients, this would give a white color to the clay, otherwise the clay would dry transparent. you can add a color before you put it to use.

TIP 2: Take only that amount of clay you need to make something, keep the remaining in air-tight container, or else the clay dries when exposed to air.

TIP 3: You can add color while kneading the dough immediately after taking the mixture from stove, but colored clay has low shelf life. Its recommended to color before you use the clay.

That's all!!! When i made the first batch of clay, i made some roses, other flowers and leaves. One can master it only after few trials. Do try at home and let me know how did it go in the comments section. 

Till then happy Clay-ing around...

Newspaper Baskets DIY

Well my newspaper's stock is piling up day after day, so here i have come up with another inspired idea of making baskets out of newspapers. I always loved the look of wicker baskets at the lifestyle stores but  often with crazy price tags. Not that i can't afford it but being a homemaker we have a habit of finding cheaper, value for money options that are often DIYable ...
Well have made so many baskets by now , i can say one thing though easy they are time consuming and a pain in the back if you don't have a good table to craft on. Lucky enough i just took few pics of one basket while weaving it. So lets start weaving baskets...

Materials Needed:

• Newspapers
• Cardboard or a thick paper to form the base
• Fevicol roll on/ glue
• some box or a vessel to get their shape for the basket. (optional).

Step-1:
 Tear the newspapers into some 10 cm wide long strips. And start rolling the newspaper strips into thin pipes using a thin stick( i used one from the broomstick). While rolling the pipe at the end use some glue to stick it. you need lots of them so make a plenty before you start weaving.

Step-2:
Take two cardboard/thick paper  pieces ,cut into squares. Take the first piece and add fevicol onto it. Now place the paper pipes at the sides, line them up , these form the pillars while we weave the basket.
Once done add the second piece of cardboard/thick paper onto the first one thus forming the base.
It would look like the one in the image below

Fold the pipes upward and i have used a masking tape to stick all the pipes on top, so that i can easily weave in a square shape.

Step-3:
Now take a pipe and fold in half, start at a corner and start weaving as shown in the pic.

Since i did not take a pic during weaving i have given an illustration image above. Keep weaving, when the pipes fall short, take another tube using fevicol (glue)  insert this tube into the weaving tubes end.

Keep weaving till your desired height is reached

Once the weaving is complete cut off the extra lenths in the top and glue them to the inside .

Add your favorite color , top it up with varnish to seal your work.

You can also add a handle                                                                                         

 I took the images while doing this basket, so i am showing the same. I have made so many baskets some with lids and some for storing grocery, some for chargers, will share them all in the next post. Till then Happy Basket-ing ...

Paper Mache Clay/Dough: How to DIY

Most of us have lots of old newspaper stacked at home and that made me thinking to recycle them. With this mission i had Google Search engine running over me....and finally found about Paper Mache also sometimes spelled as Papier Mache.

Well there are two kinds of paper mache

• Strips of newspapers are pasted over an object using a special glue (for this kind of craft) and we get the shape of the underlying object after it gets completely dried.
• Paper Mache dough/ clay.

In this post we will look at the second one
Paper Mache clay/dough is all about making a dough like consistency out of newspapers , which can be sculpted, moulded into different shapes and that can be air-dried.
Name anything and you can make it with paper mache, the possibilities are endless limited only by your creativity.

Materials You Need:

• Newspapers
• All purpose flour (Maida)
• Salt
• Water to soak in the newspapers

              Yeah that simple !!!

Procedure:

•  Get hold of some old newspapers lying in some corner of you home.
• Tear them into thin strips, don't cut using scissors. TIP: children would love to tear them all, so get help !!!
• Soak them in a bucket of water overnight. Alternatively you can boil the strips in water for an hour and let them soak in for sometime.
• Drain the water and Grind the soaked paper in a grinder. TIP: take little at a time to grind.
• Once all the pulp is ground, add Maida or all purpose flour slowly. Add salt to the mixture as you add the flour.
• Knead the mixture until you get a dough like consistency. Keep adding maida/water if necessary. It would take around half n hour of kneading and will look like the below image.
  
  
  
  
  
  

  

  Paper mache dough

• Your Paper Mache clay is ready.. Get your creativity flowing...

Look at the Ganesha idol i made using paper mache clay !

Paper mache DIY Ganesha 

Lot more can be done with this clay, few i have attempted , still in drying stage :)

Paper mache wall clock base inspired from net

Paper Mache clay Masks inspired from net

Paper Mache coils square pot

The clock and masks are inspired from internet, the last one is made by making coils of paper mache clay and then placing one on another forming a square pot kind of. I had a long square box which i have used as a support while coiling around.
Thanks for reading the post, do let me know your opinion in the comments section.
                                       Happy Paper claying to all of you...