Valentines Crafts Using Air Dry Clay

Valentines Day is just a few weeks away so here's a couple of easy gifts you can make using air dry clay.

You will need:

Air Dry Clay
Silicone molds (or stamps or lace - anything you can make a pattern with)
Heart shaped cookie cutters
Rolling pin (I just use the cardboard tube from a roll of foil)
Clay modelling tools (I just used a toothpick instead)
String or thin ribbon
Acrylic paint (if you decide to paint them)

Heart Bunting 

Roll out your clay. If you're using a mold lay it on top then roll over it a few times. Peel it off the mold.

If you don't have a silicone mold you can put lace or leaves or whatever you like over the top of the clay and roll over it to leave a pattern.

Position your cookie cutters over the clay. I put them randomly so each heart would have a different pattern on it.

Use a toothpick or straw to cut out holes for the string.

Leave to dry for about 24 hours (less if you live in a hot country). Turn over once or twice so both sides dry out.

You can paint them with acrylic if you want, I couldn't be bothered ¯\_(ツ)_/¯


Heart Hanging Pocket

I love these hanging wall pockets that are all over Pinterest. I especially liked these ones by A Shade of Teal

To make some heart shaped wall pockets, you will need the same tools and materials as for the heart garland.

Roll out some clay. I wanted a faux wooden effect so used a wood effect embosser for icing cakes. I can't remember where I got mine from (it's probably in an earlier post) but you can buy something similar here.

Cut out a heart shape using the largest cookie cutter. I then used this shape as a rough guide to cut out the top piece.

Lay the top piece over the heart shape and using wet fingers, smoosh the edges together. I sort of pinch and smooth to get the edges to meet neatly.

Keep smoothing and smooshing until the sides are completely joined.

Use a straw or toothpick to poke two holes for the string.

I wedged a rotary cutter in mine to help it keep the pocket shape as it dries.

 I painted it with some watered down green acrylic then wiped off the excess with some paper towel.

Thread some string through and put a tiny faux plant in it (or whatever else you can find that fits).

I painted a few hearts I had left over from making the bunting too. Haven't decided what to do with these yet though. Let me know your ideas!

Embroidery Tutorial

It was less blurry in real life, honest.

Embroidery & Applique Tutorial

You will need:

Embroidery hoop
Backing fabric (you need it to be a few inches larger than the hoop)
Circle of light coloured felt (same size or slightly smaller than the embroidery hoop)
Piece of skin coloured fabric (light fabric is easier to work with than dark - for darker skintones there's a really useful tutorial here that might help)
Image to trace or copy (I used a copyright free one from pixabay - click here)
Scraps of patterned fabric and/or coloured felt
Disappearing or wash-off fabric pen - I use these although I get mine from a local craft store)
Sewing scissors
Bondaweb (you can get it here)

Embroidery thread and needle

I copy pasted the image into Photoshop and resized then printed a couple of copies. (You can do it with one copy but I find it easier to work from a couple - you don't need Photoshop to do this, you can paste it into Microsoft Paint or Word if needs be).

The extended leg doesnt fit inside the embroidery hoop, so I’ll be ignoring it. 

For the applique I’m going to break the image down into several sections.

Using a biro pen, trace roughly around the entire image onto Bondaweb (follow the instructions on the packet). You want to leave a bit of a border around the edge of the image as this piece will be stuck onto the skin coloured fabric and form the base of your embroidery.

Bondaweb will reverse any image so, if you want the image to face the same way as the original you need to trace the back of your image instead. This often only matters when you’re tracing letters, so I’m not worried about reversing my image for this project.

Cut the image roughly out of Bondaweb and apply it to the skin coloured fabric (with the rough side against the back of your fabric, press down with a dry (no steam) iron for a few seconds until it sticks). Leave the backing on for now. 

Trace over the clothes and camera on separate pieces of Bondaweb. Any pieces which will use the same fabric can be grouped together. Cut them out roughly and attach the Bondaweb to the fabric as above.

Cut out the pieces out neatly and discard any excess fabric.

Peel off the backing on each piece of fabric and assemble them in the centre of the backing fabric.

Using an iron with high steam setting, press firmly to attach each piece one at a time (start with the skin tone fabric and build upwards.

Place the cotton fabric over the inner embroidery hoop, place the outer hoop on top and press together. Make sure there aren’t any puckers or pleats – you can pull gently on the edges of the fabric to adjust. Once it’s all smoothly in place, tighten the screw as much as you can. The fabric should be taught with even tension all the way around.

Roughly cut the edge of the cotton so there is a 2 inch border around the hoop.

Embroidery threads are usually 6 strands thick. Cut a piece of black thread, generally people say it shouldn’t be longer than the distance from your fingers to your elbow (about 12 inches) to reduce the chance of knots. I hate threading my needle that often so I usually make mine a bit longer (and it often gets knots in it). Split the thread into two pieces (3 strands thick) and thread your needle. There's a great video here showing two ways to do this - I tend to use the second way.

I used backstitch for the majority of the sewing. There’s a good tutorial of how to do it here.

You can start anywhere you like. Sew close to the edge of the fabric (leaving a small amount of fabric on the very edge) and use the thread to outline the various parts of the image. It’s up to you how much detail you want to include.

Insert the needle from behind the fabric and pull the thread through

Leave a small gap and push the needle back into the fabric

Use backstitch to outline all the blue lines

Outline the clothes and other accessories

You can change the colour of thread to match what you are sewing (so I used brown for the hair, red for the lips etc). For the face outline I wanted to use a finer thread so I separated two strands of black thread to use (instead of three).

Refer back to the original picture to add details to the bag etc

Change to a brown thread (3 strands) and add the hair details

Sew the face (I unpicked this after and redid with 2 strands instead of 3) and add details to the camera.

Once everything is sewn, hold the embroidery (still in its hoop) under cold running water until the blue pen has completely gone and leave to dry.

Once it’s dry we need to tidy up the back. About an inch away from the edge of hoop, sew a loose running stitch all the way around. It doesn’t really matter what thread you use as it will be hidden but I used normal white sewing cotton thread – the only thing that matters is that it is strong enough to handle some tension.

Pull gently on the thread to gather the fabric. You can use your fingers to adjust the gathers so that they are evenly spread. I like to sew the edges of the fabric to pull them closer together.

Sew a running stitch and pull on the threads to gather the fabric

Sew the edges together (sort of - this will add tension and tidy up the gathers)

Take the circle of felt and use a similar coloured thread to stitch it to the back of the embroidery using whatever stich you like. There’s a better tutorial of how to do this here.

Place the felt circle on the back and position it in the centre

Stitch it to the back. You can use any stitch you like

Hopefully you'll take your time and make it neater than mine

Admire your finished embroidery, then take a crappy blurred picture of it to share with the world!

¯\_(ツ)_/¯