Quick tutorial; Lettuce

Lettuce for polymer clay creations and miniatures

Lettuce is one of those things that you can use to decorate almost anything, seriously, anything! With the exception of cakes, ice cream, candy and... okay, so maybe not anything - but a lot of things.

I love using lettuce to decorate arrangements of meat, fish, cheese etc.

You can use this technique to make lettuce for your 1:12 scale miniatures, charms or other polymer clay creations :)

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Materials needed;

-Polymer clay in a lettuce color (various shades of green, white etc. can be used for this)

-Mold maker (I'm used Amazing mold putty)

-Sharp blade or exacto knife

-Mixed tools (embossing tools, craft knives etc.)

When making lettuce, I like to use various shades of green to achieve a more lifelike appearance. I use a mixture of different green shades, white (Cernit) and sometimes even 'champagne' or 'sahara' for mixing in with the green to 'dull' the "neon"-like-briiiiiight-ness.

Next you'll need to make some molds that can be used to make the texture of the lettuce - In the picture above you can see 3 of the ones I've made. They're actually really easy to make; Prepare a small amount of mold putty, roll it into a ball and flatten it (you'll need to work pretty fast). Use various toold to make the texture; emossing tools, needles, clay blade, tin foil - whatever you have lying around. It doesn't have to be perfect, and it doesn't have to follow a specific pattern. You'll need to make 2 for this method :)

Slice off some very thin pieces of green clay and place them on top of one of the molds. Place the other mold on top and use your hand or fingers to add pressure.

Then simply remove the top mold! - fresh, yummy (clay) lettuce, ready to serve! :)

Tutorial: Paper rose

1:12 scale miniature flower: Paper rose

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Hey! hello, how are you? long time no see!

A lot of things have happened the past few weeks, and it's been hard for me to find a balance between crafting, blogging and making YouTube videos - I've started making nail art videos again after a 1-year break! so glad to be back on there :) You can check out my videos if you're interested: 3TanjaJ3.

Anyways, here's the first flower tutorial. It should have been posted in January,.. oh well.

Materials needed:
-Paper
-Watercolors
-Paper punches (or scissors if you're going to cut the shapes yourself)
-Embossing tools, or any rounded tool
-Glue
-An eraser or something similar (rubber-ish)
-Green wire, preferably paper wrapped.

Tweezers, exacto knife + matte and glossy glaze are some more tools that can come in handy for this. You can use other tools and materials if you want - you might also need other things when making different types of flowers. I'll be showing you how to make an easy, basic rose.

1) - Begin by painting a piece of paper on both sides. It doesn't have to be perfect at all - a slobby paint job often looks better for petals because of the variation in color.

2) - Cut out petals with a paper punch or scissors. I used a heart shape for these. Use an embossing tool and your 'eraser' to shape the petals. I'm actually using a piece of amazing mold putty that I shaped into a circle :)

3) - Add a bit of glue to the wire and wrap around the first petal. Now continue adding petals till you're happy with it.

Repeat - add more petals :)

I used another paper punch for the leaves, but painted the paper green instead. If you want, you can add a lot more details and create the look of veins etc. To finish off the rose I touched up the color on the petals and added a thin layer of glaze.

Efcolor stove review

Today is the deadline of my giveaway - any entries entered today will be accepted. The winner will be announced the 25th of January.

If you read my post about out mailbox you may understand, that I have had problems receiving my mail - which also means that I currently do not have the giveaway price. If it doesn't get here before the announcement, please have some understanding. But whoever wins, WILL get their price, and I'll ship it as soon as I receive it.

Review; Efcolor stove set/ "oven"

Some time ago I showed you this picture.

I ordered the Efcolor stove set from metalclay.co.uk And now that I've tested it out some more, I'll give you my review and opinion about it.

Why did I order it?

well, you can use a regular oven to melt the efcolor enamel, and it works perfectly! but I wanted to try out this set for a few reasons;

I bought the enamel powder mainly to use when making miniature dollhouse plates, pottery etc. and heating up a regular oven just to make maybe 4 plates is rather stupid. I also thought it would be more convenient - it's small and portable, meaning that you can bring it everywhere. It's powered by 3 tea-lights, so the heat is practically free! yeah, you have to buy some candles (the set comes with 3 candles) and you'll need matches or a lighter... but those are both very cheap. The fact that it's powered by 3 tea lights is amazing, you can literally do the enameling anywhere you want.

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In the set:

I looked up the enamel stove set on both a danish website and the metalclay site. The stove set you'd get from the danish site had the stove itself - not sure if it had the tea lights in it. The set from metalclay offered a set including all the pieces you see in the picture - and even though I live in Denmark, I ended up paying less than I would have on the danish site! amazing! :)

What you get:

-Stove

-3 stands to hold pieces. These are great if you're going to enamel both sides of a piece.

-"Tweezers" a very wide nosed pair of tweezers, I actually find it great for picking up my plates.

-Spatular, a small spatular to help remove items from the hot stove.

-A large round spatular/plate with handle; making it easier to insert and remove things from the stove.

They also included 2 small leaflets about the Efcolor products.

Baking polymer clay, and baking polymer clay with enamel powder:

On the box, I believe it said that this small stove has a surface temperature of approx. 160-180 celcius. In celcius the normal baking temperature for polymer clay is approx. 110-130. So this stove is quite a bit warmer.

For the first test I placed a prebaked polymer clay plate (had been baked for 5 minutes in a regular oven) on one of the spatulars and placed it in the Efcolor oven.. I don't recommend this - it didn't take long before the clay bubbled up a bit and got burnt. I then placed a plate on top of one of the small rectangular stands - this worked well. I did the same with a plate, this time adding enamel powder to it, and the result was a beautiful plate, just as if it had been in the normal kitchen oven.

The stove set is pretty hard on the clay due to the temperature (just like a toaster oven). The clay can therefore easily be discolored (eg. white clay turning off white).

One thing I noticed, is what you see in the picture above.. I baked a "cane" (left), cut off a slice (right). I was able to bend the slice as much as I wanted. the high heat apparently made the clay really strong.

I am not going to use this oven to bake my miniature food, because I don't want it to be discolored, but I will continue experimenting with both this stove set and my regular kitchen oven, trying to overbake and bake at higher heat settings. and I will let you know the results when I've tried it out.

Do I like the Efcolor stove set?

yes! - it gives you "free heat".. It heats up in just a couple of minutes..

I think it's great for making pieces with enamel on top, and it would work perfectly for baking stuff like sprinkles and other tiny decorations for your polymer clay creations. You can even use it for baking a master that you need to make a mold from.

I guess you can even adjust the heat by removing one of the candles.. but I wish there was some kind of indicator. I am extremely happy that I bought it, and will be using it a lot :)