Hope 2012 is full of great new stories and adventures. I am posting today the gift I made for my Mom for Chrsitmas this year. Took me awhile to get it up on the blog but here it is. Throughout my childhood I experimented with Sculpey clay, a "Playto"like clay that can be baked and hardened. It comes in an array of colors, it is easy to use, and really great to work with. I used to make tree toppers, sometimes, angels and sometimes other holidaycentric characters for her. It had been over twenty years since she had received a new one and while the old ones are nice, they are... old. This year I chose to sculpt, for the first time ever, a snow elf. I also made an outfit for it. I took photos throughout the entire process to share step by step what I did. This is a great project to do with your kids letting them get there hands dirty, not too dirty though, and showing them a fun way to create!
Enjoy,
Tony
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| Step One: I took a styro foam ball and wrapped in plastic wrap ad dusted it with baby powder so the clay would not stick. I then proceeded to layer the clay on the ball shaping his facial features as I went. The tools in the image are actually from my granfather. he was an artist and made his own tools. |
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| Step Two: I rlled out long thin pieces of brown Sculpey and layered it on two frame his face with hair. Once all of the sculptiing was complete I baked it, as decsribed on the directions, in my home oven. |
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| Step Three: Painting. I waterered down some acrylic paint and began layering it on the flesh tone to create depth. I also did this with a dark brown on the hair so it did seem so flat. |
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| Step Four: I screwed a wooden dowl to a wooden base. Then I took a foam cone, love Michaels!, and using tacky glue glue them together. Then I glued the head one. I had place a hole in the base of the foam core ball and affixed that to the dowl. |
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| Step Five: By first pleating the fabric with the iron, I fanned it out and hot glued it in place creating a ruff. |
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| Step Six: I took some scarpe leather and with embroidery floss whipstitched it together |
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| Detail of hat with metal ball, button, on peak of hat. |
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| Step Seven: This is where I really got to experiment! I took some thin wire and glue it into some baked clay, gluing the clay to the foam form. This created my skeleton for the arms. Sadly, a stuffed animal was sacrificed int he making of this. I cut off its arms and legs and sewed them together to create the body shape. by wrapping some tee shrt fabric around him I created his underpiece. Note: I sculpted the gloves as I did the face. |
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| Step Eight: I dipped dyed white cotton fabric and by shirring it at the next created an oversized collar. I sprayed the fabric with glitter and sewed on some metall rings and stones for shine. Lastly, I found a tree ornament and glued it into his glove. Let the snow begin! |
