Craft Project: How to Make Clay Roses

Hello Everyone. I was honored to be invited to post on Kirsten's blog for a bit while she is away on her European adventure. For those of you who don't know me I have a daily blog over at Little Things Are Big. I am a vegan, an artist, a crafter, an art historian and a mother. Nice to meet you!

When Kirsten asked me to guest post she suggested that I share a craft project, so I thought I would oblige. Lately I have been having loads of fun with oven bake clay. Have you tried it? You can find several varieties at your local craft store.

You will need:

• Oven bake clay of your choosing
• Oven bake clay glue (it is generally in the same section of your craft store)
• Earring backs, ring blanks or necklace blanks if you want to make jewelry with the roses

The process:

 

Step 1: Start with a small piece of clay that you have roughly torn off and flattened. Do not worry about making it perfect for it is truly the imperfections that make this rose convincing.

 Step 2: Roll the flattened piece of clay into a tube, pinching the bottom shut and spreading the top part out. Usually I gently pinch the top petals to make them a bit thinner.

Step 3: Now pull out a bunch of the clay pieces and flatten them. It will look like you have a weird collection of chewed bubblegum.

Step 4: Work around the rose following the process of pinching the bottom and spreading out the top, which should start to look like petals. *You can use clay adhesive on each petal if you aren't confident in your pinching ability.

Step 5: Your rose will look great head on, but it will have a bit of a tail and that just won't fly!

Step 6: Use some scissors or a knife and cut off the tail of your rose.

Step 7: Use a bit of your clay adhesive and stick your rose on an earring back, necklace blank or whatever sounds good to you. You could also just bake it free and then adhere it to a picture frame or whatever crafty project comes to mind.

Haven't had enough clay, and how could you? Hop on over to my blog, Little Things are Big, and check out some of the other delicious bits I have been working on.