Spring Creations 2015

Ciao a tutti :)

Today, a little bit of Italian for you ;)

I'd like to show you some of my creations for spring from 2015.
Spring is really my favourite season because I love how everything wakes anew and blossoms and smells and sings.

As you can probably tell from my name I absolutely love flowers and therefore they are also my favourite things to craft. They are also quite hard to craft if you want them to look realistic because they are so delicate. If you are making them from polymer clay you need to be really careful with baking them at the right temperature and for the right amount if time. And even then it's possible that some parts break. Therefore, sometimes it's wise to support the delicate parts with a bit of liquid clay or maybe glue after baking.
I also stopped pre-heating my toaster oven because I found that the clay is not as brittle if I don't do that. But it probably also depends on the clay brand. I use mainly Fimo.

Firstly, I want to show you my jewellery for spring and then some decor items and sculpts :)

Here are my snow drop earrings and necklace I made. They're made from two canes. One for the outer petals and one including a heart shape for the inner ones. There's an eye pin going through the earrings with a green translucent clay bead at the bottom.

I also made a necklace with some leaves and some wires with beads on it.

Snow Drop Jewellery

Here my apple blossoms collection. For the necklace and earrings I made branches and put the leaves and flowers on. the flowers are cut out from one of those bakery cutters. You can buy them quite cheap on eBay or AliExpress in sets. I made the blossoms as 3D as possible.
The bangle is made from air-dry clay underneath but I wouldn't recommend it as it's not as flexible as polymer clay. I covered it in light green pearlescent clay, then put some branches on and more flowers. For the bangle I made everything flatter, so the flowers wouldn't break off (a bit broke off anyway and I had to fix it).

Apple Blossoms Jewellery

This is my set of forget-me-not jewellery.

The necklace consists of a grass and a water part. I made the water with the mokume gane technique. I layered several shades of blue and the pressed in dotting tools and other round objects. Then I made slices from it and put them on my prepared shape. I made some small stones from Fimo marble and granite. I cut out some very small flower shapes with the smallest cutter from my set (eBay or AliExpress) from two shades of blue and placed small yellow and white balls in the centre. There are also some real pressed forget-me-nots underneath but you cannot really see them. The dragonfly wings are made from a cane of white and translucent. The water was made with liquid clay but I went over it with resin later because it didn't shine enough.
I made some beads from some of the flowers for the earrings and bracelet. I also cut out leaves and bent them a bit. The light blue beads are also from clay, only the translucent ones are from glass.

Forget-Me-Not Jewellery

These bellflowers are made from cane slices. If you want to know how to make this cane check out this tutorial until picture 3c and then form into a petal shape. The tutorial is not in English but the pictures are sufficient. I then cut four petals and attached them into a bell shape. I added some green petals on top and a long snake of green which I bent into a bail for hanging it. Inside they also have thin snakes of clay for stamens.

Bellflower Decor

I also made some tulips. The canes are made with a different technique but you can also use the one from above. The stem has some wire inside to make it more sturdy. On the inside I added some yellow and black stamens. You can bake the petals first with some paper or foil inside to protect them and then add stem, leaves and stamens and bake again.

Tulip Decor

Here a spring candle holder I made for my mum. The flowers are made from cane slices (among others the ones above) as well as the butterflies (let me know if you're interested in a tutorial for that) The orange wavy strips are cut out with a wave blade, the spirals are made from red and yellow clay, pressed through an extruder and then rolled into a spiral. Then I made slices from that. The grass is just two layers of waves cut out and textured by dotting it with a needle tool. and the yellow parts are just white and yellow mixed together randomly.

Spring Candle Holder

This is a tea light I made for my mum, too. I first rolled out snakes of brown for the branches and then attached flowers, cut out with my smallest flower cutter (eBay or AliExpress) and leaves, cut out with my home made leaf cutter and textured with a needle tool. I also added some pink chalk pastel to the insides of the flowers.

Cherry Blossoms Tea Light Holder

Horrible picture but pretty tea light holder with lilys of the valley ;)
I cut out large leaves, textured them and placed them on my tea light holder. Then I rolled out snakes of green for the stems and put them on. The flowers are cut out with a little star cutter (eBay or AliExpress) and then folded carefully, so they look like the little bells. I also strung some matching beads on wires and curled up the ends. I stuck them into the clay but had to glue them on after baking.

Lily of the Valley Tea Light Holder

This little sheep has a paper and tape core to reduce weight. The fur was made by pushing a tan colour through a sieve. 

Sheep Decor

These creations were all made after I had been working with clay for about six months. So they're far from perfect. I still wanted to share them with you :)
What do you think about them?
Have you got any questions on any of the pieces?

Let me know in the comments :)

See you soon