Home made clays, embroidery, greeting cards, collage and sandcastles. 2015 augers well for variety.

 

January started with a bang, creatively.  And, once again, I have being dabbling in different types of art and craft.

Firstly, I have been experimenting with different types of home-made doughs to find a good method of making gift tags.

My first experiment, made with the help of a 9 year old friend, was making salt dough.  We mixed 1 cup salt, 1 cup warm water and 2 cups of plain flour together and kneaded it well. 

 Then, we rolled it flat with a rolling pin and used various cookie cutters to cut out shapes. 

 We used a plastic straw to cut  hanging holes in the ornaments and stamps to add interest.  After cutting, we put the shapes on greaseproof paper on baking paper lined trays.  The recipe advised to bake at 250 degrees for 2 hours but we found the temperature was too high and we needed to bake the dough for a much shorter time because it was singed.

We also discovered that the dough had to be well kneaded or it separated into layers or bubbled up.  Still, my friend was pleased with her results and took them back home to paint with acrylic paints.  In the past, I have used varnish to seal them and give them a nice shine.  I think glitter would also look great.  I wasn't particularly keen on the texture of the dough, but I thought it was a great dough for kids.

Our second experiment with dough was cold porcelain.  I used a pot I use for craft projects and mixed 1 cup cornstarch, 2 cup bicarbonate of soda and 1 1/2 cups water and heated and stirred the mixture until it pulled away from the sides of the pot.  Once again, I kneaded the mixture

 then used cookie cutters and stamps to make tags, but I also tried a few sculptures.  A little bowl turned out quite well. The recipe called for baking for an hour at 170 degrees, turning half way through cooking.  Once again, the temperature was too warm and the time was overly long.  However, I really liked the clay like appearance of the dough and the fact that it could be sanded for a smooth finish. 

 

 

 I think I'll use this method again.

The third experiment was with air dried porcelain.  This recipe called for 3 cups of PVA glue, 3 cups of cornflour, 1 tablespoon of white vinegar, 1 tablespoon of glycerine and 2 tablespoons of olive oil. 

 

I mixed the ingredients in my pot and heated it for about 15 minutes.  It takes a lot of muscle to stir this and the mixture did burn a little meaning that the pot was very difficult to clean afterwards.  After cooking, I kneaded the dough well, constantly coating my hands in olive oil to stop the dough sticking,and then put it into a sealed container for 24 hours.  After that, I rolled out some of  the dough on greaseproof paper and cut more tags

 

and made  little sculpted birds ( see the first photo). 

 I divided the other half into three balls of dough, which I dyed by kneading food dye into each ball.  I made tags and birds with these too. 

The resulting pieces took a few days to dry and resulted in a finish not unlike resin.  I think this method has the most potential for jewellery, little sculptures and tags. It takes longer and is harder to make, but I found it the most satisfying.

  

My other experiment was with making greeting cards.  I bought blank cards and then cut strips from some of my old gardening magazines.  I wove these strips and then used PVA glue to paste the woven strips on to the cards.  Next, I trimmed the weaving to fit the cards.  These will be nice gift cards for gardeners.

I have also been embroidering on my new quilt using variegated cottons.  Here are some of the motifs in my work.  As you can see, I am using images from nature and varying the stitiches.

And, I have been continuing my experiments with junk mail art:

 

 

As well as doing my own work, I went to the Frankston sand sculpture exhibition with some of my grandchildren.  The exhibition was rather expensive and neither the children or I were overly interested in the sculptures, although they were very clever.    

We preferred our subsequent trip to the beach at Seaford, playing and swimming under the shade of the pier