Makin’s Clay® Bow made with the Bow Genius™

Recently, I received a Bow Genius™ from Offray®.  With a Bow Genius™ you can make all sorts of bows, big and small.  Of course, bows are normally made from fabric ribbon.  Not mine!  I love making my bows from Makin’s Clay®.  Why?  Well, they are easy and fun to make, they keep their shape, and I can decorate them. 

I simply ran Makin’s Clay® through the Makin’s Professional® Ultimate Clay Machine from the largest setting down to the #7 setting to make a 36” ribbon.  I impressed the strip with the Makin’s® Stripes Texture sheet to make the clay look more like ribbon and then trimmed the sides with scissors.  I made the bow by following the directions for making a 4 Loops Tail Down Bow (found on YouTube), added crystals for decoration, and then a hair clip to the back to turn it into a cute hair bow.    

Check out my Treat Container project which can be found on the Makin’s Clay® blog for another example of what I used a clay bow for!

Makin’s Clay® Faux Ceramic Four Leaf Clover Pin and Earrings

For my last Makin’s Clay® project I created a Faux Ceramic Pendant which can be found on their blog.  I really enjoyed mixing and matching Makin’s Clay® cutters and texture sheets with different colors of Tim Holtz® Adirondack® Alcohol Ink mixed with JudiKins Diamond Glaze™.  Since St. Patrick’s Day is coming up, I decided I would re-visit the first project I designed as a Makin’s Clay® Design Team member, St. Patrick’s Day 4-Leaf Clover Pin, and make a pin with a faux ceramic appearance. 

 

I followed the instructions in the Makin’s Clay® Four Leaf Clover Pin project up to the point where the three clovers and the base were made.  Then, I followed the steps in the Makin’s Clay® Faux Ceramic Pendant project to mix the alcohol inks and glaze and paint the tinted glaze on the clovers, finishing up by following the directions to put the pin together. 

 

Of course, after I finished with the pin, I had to make matching earrings by following the directions in the St. Patrick’s Day 4-Leaf Clover Earrings project.

Bottle of Hope

 

The challenge for the Makin’s Clay® Design Team this month was to create a Bottle of Hope.  What is a Bottle of Hope?   

Bottles of Hope are small glass bottles covered with polymer clay and given to cancer patients. They symbolize a wish and a hope for health.  This project was started in 1999 by a Rhode Island cancer survivor and has spread internationally. Bottles are made by artists, students, survivors, seniors and many more who volunteer their time and love.   Learn more about this worthwhile project, see a gallery of many creative bottles and more here on their website. 

 I wanted to create a bottle with bright colors so I picked colors from Makin’s Clay® Multi Neon Pack.  I used a plastic bottle.  Because Makin’s Clay® is an air-dry clay, plastic is okay!  No baking involved.

 

I simple covered the bottle with orange clay and textured it with the sand texture sheet from Makin’s® Set A Texture SheetSet.  I cut flower petals from the yellow clay using the two smallest teardrop shaped Kemper cutters; six petals for the larger flowers and five for the smaller ones.  I bent them around a needle tool to give them shape.  They were glued together then crystals were added to the center of each.  I did the same for the leaves from the green clay; two for the big flowers and one for each of the small flowers.  I also made extra leaves to go on the flower stem which I extruded from the green clay.  The stem was glued to the bottle first then the flowers and leaves.

CHA Mega Conference and Trade Show 2016

 

Last week I had the opportunity to check off an item on my bucket list which was to attend a Craft and Hobby Association (CHA) Mega Conference and Trade Show.  Many years ago I would watch the Carol Duvall Show and every year she would film from CHA.  It always looked like a neat event to attend.  It definitely was!

Picture by Marie Segal

I arrived at the airport in Anaheim, California on Friday and immediately met up with my Makin’s Clay® Design Team Leader, Cindy Bisson McGee, at the airport.  We took our shuttle to the hotel, dropped off our luggage, and were out the door to meet Tom Volz from Makin’s Clay®.  He gave us a ride to the convention center where our whirlwind week began. 

I must admit, since I knew nothing about what to expect, I stuck to Cindi soaking up any information she deemed important enough to share.  When she was too busy with duties where I couldn’t follow, I walked the convention center floor.  There were booths and booths of wonderful craft products.  Beads, paper, glue, bow makers, paints, stickers, die cuts, ribbon, pens, books, flowers; the list goes on and on.  Basically, if you could craft with it, it was there. 

Picture by Marie Segal

I got to meet some of the other Makin’s Clay® Design Team members, Candice Windham, Irit Shalom, and Steph Ackerman.  We were all pleasantly surprised to receive a Makin’s Clay® Professional certification for learning and performing a variety of skills using the Makin’s Clay® and Makin’s tools.  Along with Cindi, we all took turns working in the Makin’s Clay® booth teaching different make and take projects each day (projects attendees could make at the booth and take with them so they could try some of the manufacturers’ products).  

 

Bow Genius

In my free time, I could also walk around and do make and takes at other booths.  I visited the Berwick Offray LLC booth twice because their product was not only fun but easy to use.  Their product was the Bow Genius™.   I made a diaper cupcake topped with a bow and a patriotic wand.  Both projects used the Bow Genius in different ways.  I would love to see what I could do with Makin’s Clay® and the Bow Genius™.  I’m pretty sure I could make a clay bow with it!

 

When I got home, my daughter saw the diaper cupcake I had made with the pretty pink bow on top and said, ‘What did you make THAT for?’  Lol, I told her not to worry and that she would be my only baby.  I was glad to be home with my family but also glad that I could cross ‘Attend a CHA Convention’ off my list.  I had a great time and would seriously think about going again next year to the convention in Pheonix, Arizona.

 

 

 

 

 

Met Emi Fukushima from the Carol Duvall Show!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Makin's Clay Napkin Ring

Need some quick and easy napkin rings?  Makin’s Clay® is just for you!

 

Use Makin’s Clay® Push Molds Christmas Nature and Floral and white Makin’s Clay®.

 

 

 

 

 

 

For each napkin ring make one big poinsettia from the Christmas Nature mold and three leaves from the Floral Mold.

 

 

 

 

 

Wrap a strip of clay around an oval cutter (or an empty toilet paper roll) to make the napkin ring band.

 

 

 

 

 

After everything has dried, cover with burnt umber oil paint and immediately rub off to antique them.

 

 

 

 

 

Add a dab of red oil paint to a paper towel and rub on the poinsettia.  Do the same with yellow oil paint for the center of the flower.  Apply green oil paint to the leaves.

 

 

 

 

I added red, yellow, and green glitter for a little sparkle.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Glue the leaves to the flower.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Glue the flower to the napkin ring.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Add your napkin and you are ready to go!  Quick and easy.

 

Makin’s Clay® Snowflake Gift Bottle

 

This is a plastic bottle makeover (see Pepcid® Complete® Bottle Makeover for the first one I did.)  I like to re-use or recycle when I can so covering plastic bottles makes me happy.  I used Makin’s Clay® because it is an air dry clay.  The covered bottle does not need to go into the oven for the clay to cure so the bottle won't melt.  I plan to use my newly transformed bottle to put money in and give as a Christmas gift to my favorite daughter.

 This is how I made the Snowflake Gift Bottle:

 

I used blue clay to totally cover the bottle. 

 

After the bottle dried I mixed a small dab of tacky glue with water.  I painted it on the bottle then rubbed on white glitter. I covered the whole bottle.

 

 I made snowflakes using white clay and Makin’s® Push Mold - Christmas Nature.  Once they dried, I used the glue and water mix to paint the recessed areas of the snowflakes then added blue glitter.

 

 
  

 

Using tacking glue, I glued the snowflakes to the bottle.  Now my bottle is ready to use.  Now, I'm off to find a $5 bill to go inside.  Isn't my daughter lucky?

Creating Texture Sheets Using Makin’s Clay®

I have several hard plastic items that have really nice textures.  In the past, I would roll my clay out on the textures hoping to get a good impression.  Now, I’ve discovered how to get a great impression every time by creating my own texture sheets using Makin’s Clay®. 

 

 

Makin’s Clay® is an air dry clay so the texture sheet does not have to be baked.  It just dries out with the texture on it!

 

All of the Makin’s Clay® was rolled out to a #7 or a one card thickness before being placed on the texture plates or stamps.

 

These are Fiskars® Texture plates.  They are made of hard plastic and will not go through a pasta machine.  After I rolled the clay out, I placed the clay on the texture plate, put a piece of paper over the clay, and then ran it through a die cut machine as if it were an embossing plate.  The clay will stick to the texture plate.  Just put it aside until the clay dries and the clay will release from the plate.  These is no need to use a release agent when you use the texture sheet with polymer clay.

 

These are hard plastic activity tops to a Rose Art Activity Desk.  I picked the desks up at various yard sales for about 50 cents a piece!  These desk tops are too large to go through the die cut machine so I placed the clay directly a texture on the desk top.  Then, I used my fingers and pushed on the clay until I felt the entire pattern was pushed into the clay.  I set it aside until the clay dried and loosened on its own from the plate.

 

 

This is just a rubber stamp.  It is also too big to go through my die cut machine so I just pressed the clay onto the stamp and set it aside to dry.   I did have to pull it off of the stamp but it came off with no problem.

 

 

This is a texture plate that came with an easy bake oven.  I put it through the die cut machine.