Clay Flowers

This is the mold I bought from MoldMuse

I try to be creative or artsy whenever I possible can. Fortunately or not I don't really have a "thing" in art. Over the summer I went through a phase where I tried to make soap (soap is very sticky...who knew? Later I'll make a post on that though) Lately, I’ve been really in to making polymer flowers.

Let me 'splain. I while ago I was at my city's flea (kinda) market. There was this one table with these adorable earrings, necklaces, hairpins, ECT. It was all so cute! But due to the fact I’m not made of money, I couldn't buy everything (I did buy a hair pin and a necklace.) Later over the summer I was at a teeny tiny little store in Duck North Carolina and I saw almost identical things as a saw at the flea market. I don't live very close to Duck, so I seriously doubted this one woman drove like 12 hours just to sell these things to a tiny boutique. That’s when I pieced together that the adorable flowers weren't made each by hand as I originally thought. IT WAS A MOLD! I realized it when I Googled it.

So I got on Etsy.com and sure enough there they all were. (Which means I kinda used 30 bucks on cute stuff I coulda made but whatever,) I bought a mold I tried to figure out how to use it. And here it is:

You use Polymer Clay, which is Sculpy, Premo, Fimo, ECT. Soften in your hands. Mix colors of polymer until color is smooth and the right color. Then push clay into mold (some molds may need release agent so plan ahead) you'd want to press it in pretty hard so that all of the details of the mold make it on. Smooth off the top of the mold of any extra clay. Now this may seem bizarre but if your clay is super warm from your hands put the mold of clay into the freezer, if the clay is warm when you try to get it out of the mold it will collapse in on its self a little bit. When your clay is cooler put it on a sheet of aluminum foil, put the aluminum of a cookie sheet. Repeat, as many times you want to. When you’re ready to bake, heat your normal oven to 275 degrees Fahrenheit. Bake for 12-15 minutes. You could also follow the wrapper of the clay for this. There’s not really any "raw" or "well done" for clay but be careful that you don't miss-read that as 375 like I did at first because you may notice a large group of brown flowers on the right and it smelled pretty bad. Also the black flowers, those weren’t made with black clay.

So yeah... that’s how you get the flowers or what ever you may want to make. You can also order earring studs with nothing on them and charms, necklace chains, you know...  anything and turn them into stuff. 

Here are the links for everything you need! Enjoy!

For Molds:

http://www.etsy.com/shop/MoldMuse

http://www.etsy.com/shop/moldsrus?ref=pr_shop_more

http://www.etsy.com/shop/WhysperFairy?ref=em

For Polymer:

http://www.polymerclaysuperstore.com/?gclid=CKa_6P64p6sCFQw65QodfVtE1g

*note, you can really get this anywhere... Michael's,or Target probably have a set with all the standard colors.

Extra help:

http://dinkalulu.blogspot.com/2011/03/fondant-flower-molds.html

I was going to add a picture of the ones I've made but iPhoto will not let me import them so if I can I'll add those later.

Mwah,

Izzy

Knitting

My First Knitting Project

Well I have to say, I do feel some guilt for not posting over the weekend because that was goal. But, I was sick with a terrible, terrible cold so I think I get out of my guilt with a pity party. I was 3rd in my family to be sick so we didn't have any decongestants so I just sat and knitted and blew my nose all weekend. 

Regarding the knitting, on Labor Day my family went on a "we're going to repaint all of the trim, doors and stairs in the entire house" kick, yeah, so my mom was in the stairwell painting and I was kind of stranded so I was super bored. So I eventually I went up to my chest full of artsy craft stuff(If you ever mention to your extended family you like art you will get tons of creative stuff, like more than a human could use) and found some knitting needles and some lime green yarn. I was kind of like "eh, what the heck!" and Googled how to knit. Surprisingly enough, you have to type "for beginners" at  the end of that phrase otherwise you get like 5,000 YouTube videos of people saying things like "now first you want to cast on then you begin to knit,now when you are on the 15th row you want to..." and as someone who has no idea how to cast on, knit or what a 15th row is(okay actually I could probably figure that one out but still) I had to figure most of it on my own-ish. 

Which makes me very proud to say I currently have about 14 inches of green scarf that started out skinny and slowly got much wider. On a kind of related note, if you are a knitting expert and a good teacher, let me know because I realize when I eventually finish this scarf I'm going to need to "cast off" (is that a thing?) and I’ve made a couple of mistakes that I have no idea how I made. So yeah.

Also, I'm not going to be a tool and not say anything because it was only 2 days ago that America remembered the 10 year anniversary of 9/11, My respects and sympathies to everyone who had loved ones in the horrible incident of 9/11. It was a terrible tragedy and I hope America never has to go through anything so horrible again. I'm so sorry for everything you went through.

Mwah,

Izzy

Labor Day Weekend

So it's Labor Day weekend and whatnot! Whoohoo! Today I ran in my city's 29th annual Women's Four Miler for breast cancer. There were about 3,500 Runners and Walkers and it was ah-mazing! I didn't really train...actually I trained once, in the beginning of the summer... I ran 1/2 a mile. Sooo, my goal was to finish... My mom and I ran it together and I ran about 2/3 to 3/4 of the race. Sense I didn't really train we decided to go with the "walkers" when we were lining up for the start of the race. Well, it turns out we were a bit faster than them because we probably added about 1/4 a mile weaving around them trying to get ahead. The Women's Four miler was so much fun, did you do anything fun this weekend?


Mwah,
Izzy