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 :)

Tutorial: Piece of toast/ Slice of bread

Tutorial; Piece of toast in 1:12 scale miniature

For dollhouses or use for charms

I'm back! I know, this should have been up Wednesday? - technical difficulties, literally. This is a very quick and simple tutorial, but there are a couple of reasons why I'm posting it. Firstly, I used to have a tutorial for small "lunch sandwiches" on my YouTube channel, but all the tutorials I have on there were made when I'd only been making miniatures for a few months, which means that I really, really don't like watching them, ehem.. That did lead me to delete some of them - The sandwich tutorial is one of those that has been requested as a re-upload the most. I'm also thinking of making an addition to this rather short tutorial, showing how to make a couple of different types of toppings. Definitely let me know if you'd be interested in that.

And remember, only a few days left until the deadline of my giveaway :)

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Start out by mixing the 2 colors - for the "crust" and the inside of the bread; "white part".

For the crust I took a piece of Fimo Champagne, and mixed in a bit of chocolate brown and orange (only a tiny bit, just to give it a warmer tone). For the white part of the bread I started out with Cernit Champagne - this is a slightly yellow tinted translucent-ish color. I mixed in some fimo white to make it opaque and mixed in a bit of the Fimo Champagne to "cancel out" the white so it wouldn't be quite as light.

Roll the 'white' mix into a log shape and roll out the 'crust' color on one of the thinnest settings on your pasta machine (or just very thin, if you're rolling by hand). Add a layer of the 'crust' color around the white mix and roll it into a thinner log, blending the seems. I used the side of my polymer clay blade to press down onto the log, creating the square shape. Aim for a diameter of approx. 9mm - you can always adjust the thickness by either pushing or stretching the cane.

To give the crust a more realistic baked look, I used a few shades of yellow and brown pastel, and brushed it on randomly.

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Cut the amount of slices you want.

1) - Use a toothbrush to give the slice some texture on each of the 4 sides.

2) - Using a fine needle tool, add some detailing around the 'rim'/edge.

3) - Begin adding the texture to the inside of the bread, moving your needle tool in tiny circular motions.

4) - When the entire top surface is textured you can add a few larger holes, just like in a real slice of bread :)

I prefer pre-baking my miniature bread slices for some of my projects - if you're going to make a sandwich it's very helpful as you won't ruin the texture or shape when pressing down the top slice of bread.

you can expect a couple of posts from me this weekend - feel like I'm behind schedule