Experimenting With Crayola Air Dry Clay: Mini Gnomes & Hanging Crows

Hello my crafty friends!!! Is anyone else officially sick of winter? I have those winter “blahs” and have been less than motivated lately. I can’t wait for nicer weather so I can get outside and do some spray painting, sanding, and most of all, some  “pickin!” In the meantime, I finally got around to experimenting with some air-dry clay, which I am loving!!!

It’s Crayola Air-Dry Clay to be specific, which is wallet-friendly at a whopping $4 per tub! And if you are planning on doing small figurines, this tub will go a long way! You can get this stuff anywhere; I got mine at Target!

I have a long list of “creatures” I’d like to make, but decided to start with gnomes and birds due to their easy, basic shapes. I eventually would like to make little pumpkins, little snowmen, crows and stars, and maybe some other types of Christmas ornaments. We’ll see!

I had a small bowl of water on hand for when the clay starts drying out. Just a little water helps make the clay nice and soft again.

For the hangers, I cut small pieces of thin wire and folded them in half to make little loops. Then I pushed them straight down into the top of the clay birds. Now that they are dry, the wire loops seem to be pretty firm in place.

You can make whatever shapes you’d like, as this clay is very soft and easy to work with!

Here’s my gang of gnomes, drying on the counter. I let them dry for a good two days before painting them. Obviously the thicker they are, the longer they’ll need to dry completely.

Before painting these guys, I looked up gnomes online and just got some ideas. I didn’t want to paint anything too complex. I like to draw out ideas before I start projects to decide which direction I’d like to go. I also found that drawing gnomes is really fun and addicting. LOL!

I lightly drew some lines for the beard and hat. Don’t press too hard or you’ll make indents in your clay.

And start painting! I used acrylic paint for this project. Now that I am done, I would recommend using water-based acrylics rather than the thicker, higher-pigmented acrylics. The thicker acrylics did not adhere to the clay as well and “chipped” off in places. The only down side to the water-based paint is that it is significantly thinner, so multiple coats are needed to get complete coverage.

You can see in the picture below, the difference between the 2 types of acrylic paint. The one on the left is the water based paint which adhered much better. The one on the right tended to “chip” more. I will definitely be using the water-based paint from now on.

And here’s one of the completed gnomes! Isn’t he cute? After the paint dried, I seal it with 2 coats of glossy mod podge. It created that shiny glazed kiln look! Here’s a before and after…

And here is a completed birdie. I painted the tip of his beak yellow and did little gray dots for eyes. I haven’t sealed this one yet, but I will use the same glossy mod podge. I used some thin jute twine to hang him up!

I love the black birds, but I also plan on painting a some red and some americana blue. I only painted a few of my creatures last night because they are a bit time-consuming, and I was also itching to post something since it’s been a while! I’ll be sure to post the rest once they’re painted, but it might be a while. Hehe…

Let me know if you give the air-dry clay a whirl, and how it goes! I think it would be great for kids crafts, but there’s a whole world of possibilities for folk art or “prim” type crafts too! Happy crafting and have a super-duper week!

New Etsy Additions: Skeleton Keys, Cinnamon Sticks, Rose Hips and More!

So this post is a shameless plug for my Etsy store…sue me! I haven’t done much crafting since the Sculpey ornaments, but I have been busy trying to photograph and list some new items; mostly craft supplies. It seems my store has become more geared toward craft supplies and accessories, which I am happy to provide for those who may not have immediate access to them!

Here are a few pics, to give you an idea of what’s new over at Upstate Primitives!

Starting with jars of colored buttons! I have seen so many cute button projects on Pinterest lately, I thought these could come in handy!

TONS of skeleton keys of all shapes and sizes, and I have TONS more to come! Please feel free to email me there is a specific type of key you’re looking for!

I love these super tiny keys and thought they would make great charms for you jewelry-making peeps out there!

I also have some dried rose hips, anise stars, allspice, and cloves, for your crafting or “fixins” needs! In the near future I plan on making some scented fixins for my booth with some cinnamon-applesauce ornaments mixed in – maybe little stars or hearts – we’ll see!

I’ve had requests for the long cinnamon sticks, which can be hard to find. These are great for making giant stars (make star shape and tie together with jute or homespun strips) or “cinnamon stick santa’s” as seen on Pinterest!

Also some 6″ and 1″ cinnamon sticks!

Thanks for takin’ a look and I’ll try to be back with some crafty shananagans as soon as I get motivated! This time of year tends to be a little slower for me, but I have a few potential projects in mind. Have a great week everyone!

My First Attempt At Stamped Sculpey Clay Ornaments

Yay, the world didn’t end! That means we can keep crafting!

I’ve wanted to play with oven-bake clay for a while now so I picked up a package of Original Sculpey oven-bake clay at A.C. Moore’s the other day.  This stuff is great – it’s very easy to work with and only took me just a minute of kneading it for it to become very pliable. I can see why it’s good for kids crafts as well!

I decided to try stamping the clay. I broke out a bunch of random stamps including a set of small alphabet stamps. After some experimenting, I would recommend using stamps with heavy lines. The stamps with fine details didn’t work as well.

I see these small letter stamp sets in the $1 bins at all the craft stores! I’ve even seen them at Walmart. Scoop ‘em up when you see them, because they work AWESOME for this project! Helpful tip: write the letter / number on each side of the stamp so it’s easier to find the stamps you are looking for when they are strewn all over your craft area!

Since I do things the ghetto-fabulous way, I used different sized wine glasses / flutes as my ornament cutters. You could also use cookie cutters, which I did not think of until after the fact…duh!

(Disclaimer: I would not recommend doing using glasses that you plan to drink out of, because I don’t want to be responsible for getting you sick! Same with using knives and cookie sheets…technically you are supposed to keep your clay and food/cooking tools separate. Honestly, I just wash them really good and use them again like normal, and so far, I’ve lived!)

I rolled out the clay to approximately 1/4″, cut out the circles using my glasses, and then stamped them. There were many re-do’s and mistakes…I found some stamps worked well and some didn’t. You gotta just play around and see what looks best! I poked a small hole in the top of each pendant using a toothpick. I’ve seen others use a straw for a bigger hole.

Follow the Sculpey directions on the box to baking times. I baked mine at 275 °F for 15 minutes, and they came out great. After letting them cool completely, they were quite hard and durable.

And now for painting! Again – experimenting here. Upon tons of Googling, I found you should use water based acrylic craft paints, unless you are going to seal them first, which I didn’t want to bother with. I used the acrylic craft paints below, which happen to be super cheap too. I think these pains were $.50 each from the craft store if I remember correctly!

I tried a couple of different techniques with varying results. Technique #1 was painting over the stamp indents to get paint down in the creases, and then wiping off the surface with a DAMP paper towel.

Here are they results (below). They come out good if the stamp is deep enough. Otherwise, the paint easily wipes right out of the indented areas. See the middle of the bird cage on the left? I didn’t evenly press down the stamp, so some areas show up better with the paint than others. The key one came out pretty good!

Technique #2, which I really like, is to paint the whole surface and then wipe off the paint with a DRY paper towel. This leaves some paint on the surface, almost like a “stain”, while also leaving paint down in the grooves of the stamped design.

Here’s the result. I like this better, because the color on the surface kind of covers up any imperfections and adds to the “vintage” look.

Another way to do this would be just paint the surface with the desired color and then wipe, faced down, on the dry paper towel like this:

That seemed to work well in keeping the paint down in the grooves but leaving a nice over-all color stain on the surface. I also found you can do this, let it dry, and do this technique over again to get bolder colors! Here is the result of doing it twice:

Technique #3 was doing the 1st method (paint then wipe off with a damp paper towel) and then letting it dry…then doing a light “wash”, if you will, with another color. I started with black lines:

And then diluted some green (with a bit of water) and painted over it. I then wiped it with a dry paper towel to leave some green staining on the surface.

The result is the one in the picture below, on the bottom left. The same technique was used for the other two in this pic, but different colors. This is my fave I think! Love the two-tone look!

After they dried, I sealed them with the hard coat Mod Podge. It dried with a very subtle matte finish, and you couldn’t even tell it was there. The sparkle Mod Podge would be cool too, especially for Christmas ornaments, but I didn’t end up using it for this project.

Here are some close-up’s. I used thin jute twine I had lying around to hang them up. I think for a first try, they came out pretty neat!

My mind is spinning with ideas…these would be great as custom Christmas ornaments, tags for gifts, wedding favors, or just little ornies to hang around the house! Small ones for jewelry pendants, wine glass charms, or big ones as coasters! If only I had more time!

I found some other craft blogs with some variations on this project:

Clean, simple, white ornaments from Little Lovelies:

Or these fun, colorful little doodads from Neat and Tangled:

And some more great personalized Christmas ornies from Then She Made:

Hope you were able to get some ideas from my day of fooling around Sculpey and the links I have posted above! There is so much potential here! I can’t wait to work on some more and maybe create some ornies to sell in my Etsy store! Also coming soon to my Etsy: tons of awesome real antique skeleton keys, bulk rose hips, cinnamon sticks, and more! Stay tuned!!!

Oh yeah, and Happy New Year!!!!!!! Cheers!

Pinterest Inspired Christmas Treat: Strawberry & Cool Whip Santas

Merry Christmas Eve! First off, I’d like to announce the winners of the stamp give-away! Congrats to Matt, Linda, and Carolyn! Thanks SO much to all who left such kind words about my blog! It’s so much fun to get feedback and I appreciate every single comment that was left! Thank you ALL for your support! I will definitely be doing more give-aways in the future, this was FUN!

So in honor of Christmas, I thought I’d share these little guys I whipped up for my office Christmas party. As you may know, I have a mild addiction to Pinterest…and I know most of you do too! You’ve probably seen these and have them pinned on your Christmas Treats board somewhere! They were just as easy as they look, and are SO incredibly yummy! I give this project 2 thumbs up!

I’ll share my process, although it’s pretty self-explanatory. I would highly recommend Cool Whip Frosting instead of regular Cool Whip or whipped cream. This new Cool Whip Frosting (cream cheese flavored….SCORE!) is a little more dense and will hold up the hats a better, where as the others seem to be too soft and more likely to run. I used chocolate sprinkles as the eyes.

Pre-slice the tips of the berries, or the “hats”…

And fill a Ziplock bag full of your Cool Whip frosting. You can use a frosting bag tip like this if you want, or not! I prefer Ziplock’s to frosting bags because there is no cleaning involved…just toss ‘em when you’re done.

Pile on a little santa head…

Add the hat, and dab a little bit of frosting on the tip of the hat!

Add your eyes, and done! I put them in cupcake papers for easy grabbing and transport

Some are fat, some are small…but they are allllll delish!

I just love these! They may become a regular on the annual Christmas treat list!

I shall leave you with a one of my favorite holiday illustrations by the one and only macabre artist Mr. Edward Gorey! Wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Easy Dollar Store Craft: Sharpie Decorated Christmas Ornaments

If you are on Pinterest, or frequently peruse craft blogs like I do, then I know you’ve seen some variation of this Sharpie project! Porcelain mugs, plates, bowls, and more…simply drawn on with Sharpies and baked for 30 minutes to make the designs permanent. Talk about easy and FUN! I love this idea – the possibilities are truly endless!

Though it’s not technically a dollar store, these porcelain ornaments were only $1.00 at A.C. Moore. I betcha you could find some similar at the Dollar Tree. If not, I know most dollar store have porcelain coffee mugs and plates that would work great too. You could also look around the thrift stores and score some cheap porcelain “canvases”!

I looked online at graphics and clip art and got some ideas on what I wanted to draw.  It’s hard to see in the picture below, but I did draw a rough outline of my design with a pencil before taking a Sharpie to it.

I love this little folk art snowman! I copied him from Chestnut Junction Graphics. I did purchase the graphic for use on other projects as well…he’s just too cute!

Helpful tip: While working on your designs, don’t fret if you make a mistake. A little rubbing alcohol will “erase” the Sharpie marker on the porcelain (before baking, that is). I used Q-tips as a way to touch up and re-do some areas.

Here are some of the designs I came up with for my ornaments! I free handed these but you could easily use a transfer method or a stamp as a base for your design if you’d like!

Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes to make the Sharpie designs permanent. After baking, they look exactly the same. They do not brown or fade!

I cut off the tacky gold string and replaced it with some ribbon and twine. You could use jute twine, baker’s twine, homespun fabric, ribbon, or wire to hang your ornaments. Go with whatever compliments your designs!

Awwwwww, love my lil’ snowman hanging on my lil’ country Christmas tree! What a great, cost-effective idea for Christmas gifts or party favors!

And I hung up the crow themed ornie on my crow shelf. I love crows…can ya tell?!?

And now for something even MORE fun than crafts…FREE craft supplies! I realized that since I started my blog I have never done a give-away! Shame on me! I have so many loyal readers and crafty friends that I thought I’d give away some fun stamps to say THANKS for reading my blog! Leave a comment on this post with your name and you could win one of these 3 stamps!

A large “script” stamp, which would be great for tags or scrapbooking…

A Victorian looking skeleton key

Or a set of 4 vintage “Ladies In Hats” stamps, as you may have seen on my little grubby tags! I have my own set of these pretty ladies!

I will use a random number generator to pick 3 numbers and match those numbers up with the list of comments. For example, if you’re the 3rd person to leave a comment, and one of the randomly generated numbers is “3″, then you’ll win one of the stamps! I will draw 3 numbers a week from today, which will be on Christmas Eve! I’ll email the winners and mail them out just in time to start off 2013 with some fun new craft projects!!! GOOD LUCK!

If you give the Sharpie Ornies a whirl, I’d LOVE to see pics! I’ll even post them here! Thanks! Happy Craftin’!

“Puppies In Stockings” and New Craft Supplies In my Etsy Store!

So things have been pretty busy here lately – and not in a crafty way, unfortunately. BUT, it’s been a ton of fun because Greg’s police K-9 had a litter of 9 puppies which were 3 weeks old yesterday! I thought I’d share some pictures of these cute little chunky monkeys which are sure to make you go AWWWWWW!

First, here is the very cool x-ray that was done a couple of weeks before she gave birth. I love all the little skeletons!

Here they are the day they were born. You may notice there are 10 here. She had 11 pups total, and we did lose 2. Unfortunately it is to be expected with a large litter.

Their eyes and ears do not open for at least a week or so.

A tired mama rests while babies eat…

Fast forward to this week…Christmas stocking photo shoot! Their eyes are open and they are squeaking and rolling around all over the place as they attempt to walk. After some initial chaos, I got them to cooperate and got some pretty darn cute results…

And the one going in our Christmas card this year:

I have a problem…I like to dress them up like little people. Is that so wrong? LOL!

Anyway, I wanted to share some new items, mostly craft supplies, that I have added to my Etsy store Upstate Primitives. Per some of my fellow crafters’ request, I have added some tin stars and hearts, like the ones I have used in a lot of my posts. I also added knobs, buttons, keys, and many other items you have already seen being used in some of my projects. I know there are lots of people in rural areas that don’t have access to the plethora of craft stores as I do, so I wanted to add them to my store.

Hope everyone is having a fabulous holiday season and enjoying all the small moments that make this time of year so great. Christmas lights, family and friends, holiday cookies and treats, and all that good stuff. I know I am! Have a great day and thanks so much for stoppin’ by!

Easy Thanksgiving Favors: Rolo Pretzel Turtles

I have to apologize for the lack of posts over the last couple of weeks. I kinda had a craft-overload leading up to my show at the beginning of the month and needed a break! You know, let the tips of my fingers heal from all the hot glue burns….hehe!

So, in honor of Turkey Day, I made up some yummy little favors to bring to my Mom’s for dinner. I admit, I really just wanted an excuse to make these treats cause they are SO stinkin’ good! The salty crunch of pretzels with chocolate, caramel, and pecans? A-MAZING!

You’ll need: treat bags, twine, some homespun fabric torn into thin strips, and some little “Happy Thanksgiving” tags of some sort. I found this vintage “Thanksgiving Greetings” graphic online and printed it out on some heavy stock paper. You could personalize some homemade tags or print out virtually anything to decorate your favors!

Here’s the free graphic, downloaded from littlebirdieblessings.blogspot.com, if you’d like to use it

For the Rolo Pretzel Turtles, you’ll seen small pretzels (these square ones work best), some shelled pecans and a bag of Rolo’s! Chocolate wafers (melting chocolate for candy making) also work great if you want to nix the caramel.

Place the Rolo’s on top of the pretzels and put them in the oven for about 5 minutes at 350 degrees. The Rolo’s should be softened and warmed though, but not melted. Immediately place a pecan half on each one, pressing it down into the softened Rolo! Yuuuuum!

Tip: A foil lined baking tray makes for very easy clean up.

Put some in a treat bag and tie with a little strip of homespun fabric. You could also add some raffia for a nice Fall look!

Use a hole punch to punch small holes in the corners of the tags…

And tie on your tag with some twine. Cute, quick, easy, and super yummy favors that everyone will LOVE, guaranteed!

Before I go, I thought I’d share some photos of my newly re-arranged booth at The Carriage Place! I made the decision to condense back down to one booth, because I felt that one full booth was better than two sparse booths. It was getting hard to keep up with both spaces between working full time and all the other projects I have going on. I am back in my corner booth and it’s looking fresh and over-flowing with all kinds of vintage and primitive goodies!

I hope everyone has a very Happy Thanksgiving, and a great long weekend with family and friends! Thank you again for all the very sweet comments, tips, and feedback you all have left for me – I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it. When it comes to being thankful, I am most certainly thankful for all the support and love from all my fellow crafters out there!