Grandchildren's Craft

Cat Transformer Superhero - Front

The youngest two granddaughters asked to come for sleepover over the weekend as their elder sister was at a friends overnight.  Mainly because the 8 year old had some homework that required her to raid my craft stash!

She had to design a superhero and make a model of the hero or one of his/her "tools/accessories.  She had chosen "Cat Transformer", whom we later named Annie.

Our first job was to find how much of my Cloud Clay was still useable as they hadn't used it for over a year and some of it had dried out.    Fortunately the Black was workable, which was the main colour she needed.   She used the smallest of my Wilton people molds to create the figure.   Using a toothpick to do the marking on her boots.  I showed her how to create hair, and she soon got the hang of that.  I gather her mum is making her an actual costume to wear - so she created the cat ear hairband, and painted the face.   We discovered a clay butterfly in my stash that we had made some time ago, so that was added to her back as obviously being a superhero - she should be able to fly!   A brad was pushed into her front as a motif on her jumper.

Originally she drew whiskers on the face, and then I had an inspiration and cut some stamens to create the whiskers - certainly was the finishing touch!

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Back

Obviously her younger sister wanted to work with the Cloud Clay too - She wanted to make an owl for her aunt for her birthday.

Inspiration struck me and I found a polystyrene egg in my stash - which at least meant she didn't need quite so much clay.  I think she did quite well, with a little guidance from me on how to create the shapes.  It was duly present to her aunt who said she would put it on her office window sill!

On Sunday they made a birthday card for their aunt in Craft Artist.  Also some masks, and some pictures of animals with their own faces superimposed on them, but I forgot to take some photos!  duh!   They are loving using Craft Artist and are gradually learning all the various effects they can get with it.   Obviously the 8 year old used computers quite a bit at school, and the 5 year old is catching her up.   I love to see them being so creative with it.

Owl comes to visit

You may recall seeing a sneaky peek of this fairy door on the table in the work in progress photo I shared of some of my clay work the other day.

I have been gradually working on it over the past week or so.   The door was painted with Pebeo paints and crackled using DecoArt Weathered Wood and Crackle paste, and then more distress inks were rubbed into the finished crackle.

I painted the owl using Pebeo paints and distress inks.  Using a random layer of ultra thick embossing powder over his body for some texture, and then triple embossing his eyes. and nose.

Originally I had intended making the flowers and leaves from card, but then decided to use cloud clay and some of my old plunge cutters.  I experimented painting the Christmas roses, winter jasmine, holly and ivy with Memento inks with an overlay of clear sparkle.

I used some white puffy paint for the snow, which I heated with my heat gun to make it more interesting, and then applied some glue and sprinkled  Eiskristall over it as well as treating the fir cones (real ones) in the same way.

The cloud clay leaves, flowers and berries before painting

Playing in the Sunshine

What a lovely day it was yesterday.  Some real WARM sunshine for a change.  My son and his girls came over for Sunday lunch, and it was so lovely we actually ate our roast dinner outside.

After lunch the four year old and the seven year old wanted to go up in my Den to paint/craft.  Well as it was first time I had been able to get up there this year, who was I to argue.

We decided to get out the cloud clay and they wanted to make flowers - so I taught them a couple of flowers, and then we stuck them onto small 3" canvas boards.

This is the result of their efforts:

Rose, and Daisy by four year old T

Roses and a background by seven year old C (that is supposed to be her name in the bottom corner,
 (only she ran out of space and name is on two lines!)

and finally four year old wanted to paint a picture for her mum - using my best Pebeo acrylics!

I  think they mastered hand-made roses pretty well!   (well they had a good teacher didn't they - lol!)

Googly Eyes!

Another afternoon of  childminding yesterday, and I went armed with googly eyes, gems, and mosaic foam, and buttons!

It was just the 2 year old, as the older ones were at school.

We had such fun for a couple of hours, my granddaughter was singing away as she played.  I was asked to make some animals (in the colours requested by her) so we have a blue elephant and a blue frog, a monkey and a chicken (well it was supposed to be duck, but I can't make ducks!

We then decided to make some selfies!  Hers is on the right, and apparently she is really proud of it. The one on the left is supposed to me, and T helped me with this!  lol!  She also made the abstract piece with googly eyes and gems.

She then proceeded to make a card sticking on buttons, gems, small mosaic foam bits, and more googly eyes!

Yes we had fun!

I have got her again on Friday - and must put my thinking cap on as to what we can do.  If it is fine, it will probably be another day in the garden with the cloud clay!

A Fun Afternoon with the Granddaughters

I spent a lovely afternoon minding my three youngest granddaughters yesterday.  I went prepared armed with jam jars and Cloud Clay, as well as a my rubber band loom.   Well we never got to the loom, We spent two and a half hours sitting at the garden table playing with the clay,

They had loads of fun, and were so quiet for the whole time!  (two and a half hours - being so well behaved and no bickering!)  this must be a record!

From left to right the jar tops were made by the 5 year old, the 2 year old and the 8 year old, with the 8 year old also creating the piece at the front.

They had a little help from me - mainly showing them how to do something and then guiding them through it, although I did help out on occasion.   The 2 year old obviously wanted to try all the colours and all the cutters - lol!   In fact she created the marble effect piece of clay on the right.  Her big sister liked it so much, that she took off the pink she had placed on her jam jar, and used the marbled piece on her jar instead!   I also have some rather nice marbled pieces to use at a later date, when I get to do some playing!

Funny Bunny Jam Jar Topper

Had a little play with Cloud Clay this afternoon.  My husband has named her "Funny Bunny".   OK so I am a little out of practise modelling bunnies - it must be 20 years since I last made one in sugarpaste!

Cloud Clay playing

Whilst our visitors were here, I introduced them to Cloud Clay, and this is some of our makes.

I am a bit proud of this first one - as this was a challenge from the children - Olaf the snowman from Frozen. Quite pleased with result, as he was completely alien to me !!!!!

Some of our other "plays"

cowboy with football

Daisy the Elephant - made by Sassie

He was supposed to be a teddy bear with a pot of honey

all our makes!

Cloud Clay Figure - Self Portrait?

We had a demonstration at Sugarcraft Club the other week on figure modelling.   Having purchased one of the books written by our demonstrator, I decided to try my hand at figure modelling a person in Cloud Clay.

Well this is the result!  She is a bit wobbly, and her legs went a bit funny with the weight and the heat of the day, although she does have a kebab stick through one leg and up to her head!  But not bad for a first effort, and she is supposed to be a funny old lady!   Making her in sugar would have been a lot easier, as you have to stick the pieces together with sugar glue, whereas Cloud Clay sticks to itself and often in places you don't want it to stick!

More practise needed - on a day that isn't so hot and humid, or else revert to making flowers in Cloud Clay, and leave the figure modelling to the sugar version !  

Experimenting Again - Mixed Media ....

...   with a Vengeance!

Top View

Well I got carried away with this project!   It started off as a metal cigarette tin.

A sheet of Pebeo cotton canvas was painted with blue and green metallic acrylics (non Pebeo)and then run through a Sheena Douglass embossing folder.  

It is too difficult to get the canvas to stick to all of the top of the tin, so the edges had a mix of Pebeo modelling paste (relief paste) and gesso applied to them, and then painted with the metallic acryllic paints as before.

Painted canvas was then cut up and stuck to the tin on the top and sides with pva glue.  Everything was then over-painted with Fantasy Prisme paint in turquoise, and the leaves picked out with Pebeo Ceramic leaf green.  (I am not too happy with the result - think I should have used the Vitrail Glass Paint.)  I also lost some of the depth of the embossing in the glueing process, which didn't help with the painting of the leaves.

Another View showing side

I made various flowers in Cloud Clay, using a daisy cutter.  I used white, and blue mixed with white Cloud Clay.   I shaped the blue ones with a modelling tool for one, and also cutting the petals in half and using a modelling tool for the other one.  The centres were also made in white paste, and textured with a cocktail stick.   When dry the flowers were painted with Fantasy Prisme Turquoise and Yellow Vitrail for the centres.  As an experiment, I used my airbrush and some Culpitt white airbrush colour.  (I bought this this week,  as our little local shop couldn't work out why you would want white airbrush colour! - so I offered to try it out!  - I can see it being useful on coloured paste/icing.  It will also be interesting to see how ti works when mixed with other colours. )  It has just given a sort of speckled effect as obviously the enamel repelled it slightly.  It would be different on a matt surface.  I sealed it with a spot of Spray and Shine.

I also made leaves from a mix of blue and green Cloud Clay, and these were painted with a mix of Prisme turquoise and Vitrail Chartreause Green.

So there we have it - a real "Mixed Media" project!

Close up of Flowers

I also had a little play with an odd piece of card left over from making butterflies the other day, and ran it through another of Sheena's embossing folders, and then painted the dragon fly with drops of turquoise and pink Fantasy paints, and some red Vitrail.

Thanks for dropping by.

Butterflies continued

I saw a demonstration on sugar butterflies on Friday, and wanted to have a play.  Yesterday I decided to have a practice with cloud clay.  The bottom butterfly was just made by stick each of the sections on wing to each other.   The top was was made "properly" with wired wings.

Today I practiced my airbrushing on them (they were white cloud clay to start with).  I sprayed lime green down the centre of each wing, and heather on the edges, I then over sprayed them with blue.  They were a little "flat" colour-wise, so as I was in the kitchen instead of going to find the varnish, I grabbed the pearl cake spray from the cuboard.  It has given them a lovely sheen.

I could have dusted them colours rather than air-brushing, but it did give me a chance to practise my airbrushing.

Not perfect by any means, but not bad for a first attempt in a different medium.

More Cloud Clay

I had a short play in the Den again this afternoon, although it was a tad cold with a strong southerly breeze coming in the door, and little sunshine!

Having watched yesterday's Cloud Clay show, I thought I would do my version of the frog.  I love him.

Cloud Clay Frog

Another attempt at scary trees.

I then tried to make a sweetpea, but this attempt is not that good, as I had no tools or cutters in the Den, so it was made entirely with just my fingers and a paintbrush!  and then airbrushed with purple..  At least my husband recognised what it was supposed to be!

A sweetpea?

I then found the tin I altered the other week, and tried to decide which of the clay embellishments I made yesterday would look best on it:

Cloud Clay and Air Brushing

First Attempt

I have been watch Cassie Brown's demo's all week, and my lovely husband said would I like one - well I didn't need asking twice, have wanted one for 30 years!

It arrived this morning, and having been good and read the instructions, and watched the video, I sat and played this afternoon.  I started with the "play" above, trying out all the techniques demo'ed on the CD.

I then decided to try mixing some colours and paint a scene!  bit amateurish, but not bad for second attempt at airbrushing.

First attempt with colour

I then tried using a freebie cake stencil.

stencilled train

Also this week at last my Cloud Clay order was delivered.  (someting happened to the first order and it got lost in cyberspace).   So I had a play and then used the airbrush on the items.  The items on the right was created with terracotta coloured cloud clay and the one on the right with yellow cloud clay.  Really pleased with the way they turned out

Stamping into Cloud Clay, then airbrushing with  red, blue and green, and varnished

Next it was the turn of a rose I made.

Yellow Cloud Clay rose airbrushed with orange

Finally, my daughter and eldest granddaughter called in to play as they knew the airbrush had arrived.

I showed them what to do and these two are my daughter's first two attempts - sickeningly good! (either that or I am a good teacher!)

Daughter's first attempt

I may never speak to her again - lol!

Daughter's second attempt!

A few cards and some crafting in the Den

I have been a bit lax posting recently.  Do have a slight excuse as had a hiccup health-wise, and also had my pal Sassie to visit.  Mainly to keep an eye on me and make sure I didn't overdo things! 

I did manage a bit of crafting whilst she was here, and we made some cards and we managed an afternoon in the Den.

my card for a crafting pal's ruby wedding

 

 

Sassie's card for same pal

card for another crafting pal's birthday - using Zentangle cd

New Home card for great niece

Card for a Nephew's birthday

Enamelled ashtray for my hubby

Sassie's canvas for her bedroom, using Cloud Clay

A Bracelet and a Mask

 

I have been practising some new knots, and decided to make a bracelet.  Colours aren't brilliant in the photo - rattail is pink and purple, and the beads are purple hematite.  I like the knots on the end of the bracelet instead of beads, they don't catch so easily.

 

This is the mask my eldest granddaughter made.  I love the colour blue and green metallic acrylic mixed together.  The flowers were stamped out of Cloud Clay using cake decorating cutters, and then painted.  The eyes and mask were edged with silver gilding wax.

Hibiscus Revamp

 

Inspired by watching Sheena Douglass this morning, I decided to re-vamp one of my cloud clay pictures this afternoon.

 

As you can see from the next picture the original "play" was created using the hibiscus stamp, which was painted with acrylic paints.   I wanted to "bling it up a bit" and initially used some gilding wax.  I still wasn't really happy with it - and it was in the Den awaiting some inspiration,

 

Well today was the day I decided to repaint it using the Luminarte Primary Elements.  I wasn't sure if they would work over the gilding wax - but Yes, they worked.   It really has brought the picture to life.

 

 

 

 

Below is another photo taken with the flash, which has caught the "bling" of the mica a bit better.  It still doesn't reflect the effect that you get in the flesh so to speak.

 

 

 

More Cloud Clay Experimenting

 

Following on from yesterday's post I finished off the items I was preparing, and put some ribbon on the pink rose hearts.

 

The white roses have been painted and stuck on the plaque, and I made some black roses and leaves and put them on the white hearts I had prepared.