Engagements & Clay

My sister and her boyfriend got engaged over Christmas - very exciting! It also means that i get to re-delve into wedding craftiness - oh happy days! Anyway congrats to both of you, but skim past this post if I havnt given you your present yet!!!

Engagement presents arnt really given in any big way anymore, but I wanted to get them a little something as a token that they could keep/use etc. So I started looking around online for inspirations as none of my current sewn offerings really seemed to say 'engagement'! Anyway I was on www.notonthehighstreet.com and saw the cutest little fridge magnets and thought once again - 'I could make those!', I just needed some clay, some paint, some cutting implements and some magnets.

So... I got myself some of this DAS white air drying clay (seeing as I don’t have a spare kiln lying around these day)! This stuff truly is as good as its word and dries solid overnight, just make sure you keep any spare in an air tight container. I managed to pick up a grey version of this before Christmas to make decorations with but had to paint it white before painting the colours on top (I can live without that kind of phaff!), also it had all of those little fibers in it that clay usually has. Weirdly the white stuff exists minus fluff so bonuses all round!!!

I bought some teeny tiny cookie cutters to cut out and stencil my little shapes. I am not entirely sure why you would ever want a cookie as small as your finger nail, but they work well for fridge magnet purposes so I cant complain!




I also used the adorable little letter stamps my hubby got me for my birthday last year to stamp the names of my sister and her now fiance into the clay.



So step one - roll out the clay and cut out a whole variety of shapes. Smoothing the edges if there are any tiny fibers showing (whilst its not as bad as the grey clay - you dont escape the hairiness entirely!)







Step two - stamp into the shapes any words, letters or patterns you like.



Next wait for the shapes to dry!

Next comes the COLOUR! I used a few acrylic paints to paint the shapes which work well with just a light coating or if you build them up.

As I have used the shapes on garlands and as magnets (meaning that you get to see the back of them!) I have painted the back of the clay shapes too.







For the fridge magenets I bought some rolls of marnetic strip, cut it up into pieces and stuck it to the back. The magnetic strip isnt exacly the strongest in the world: they wont be the most useful magnets in the world, but they stick to the fridge well (see below). I'm going to try to get an acrylic glaze to finish them off as it might help pick out the lettering a bit more.