It is not difficult to prepare cold porcelain with your own hands at home, there are several methods. The two main ones used by experienced craftswomen are considered in this article. Creating beautiful porcelain products is an interesting undertaking available to anyone. And we will help you in your work!
What is cold china?
By his name, he speaks of the resemblance to real porcelain. But unlike ordinary material, “cold” naturally dries in the air. They make flowers that are stunning in their naturalness - lilac, roses, orchids.
"Cold porcelain" is rapidly gaining a popular place among craftswomen. Its delicate texture, velvety, and ease of use become attractive. Ready-made mass is sold in needlework shops and goods for creativity, but resourceful needlewomen did not stop there and came up with recipes for home cooking.
As a rule, flowers are molded from cold porcelain, and the result is incredible - delicate, fragile, translucent - absolutely indistinguishable from real ones!
For what purposes is it used
As many masters believe, and quite rightly, a mass of cold porcelain is an ideal option for sculpting excellent products! Flowers created from it can be used to decorate any object: interior bouquets, frames, caskets, women's jewelry.
Gathering ready-made buds in compositions, female needlewomen make stunning bouquets for wedding ceremonies. Such inflorescences do not fade, and for many years continue to remind of the triumph.
Artificial compositions optimally fit into modern interiors, taking not the least role in the arsenals of designers. As already mentioned, the "porcelain" flowers, which were performed by a talented master, are insanely similar to real ones and only a tactile touch can convince you of the opposite!
Decorating gift wraps with small flowers and leaves, you will bring joy to relatives and friends, for whom these surprises are intended.
Ingredients for Making Cold Porcelain
In the modern needlework world, all the components are available to any person who wants to learn how to sculpt. In general, there is a finished material, but many prefer to make it on their own.
The ingredients for roses made of cold porcelain, the master classes for creating which are presented on the Internet, do not differ much.
It will be necessary to acquire one glass of corn starch (for the first time, you can take potato, the difference is only in the shade of the finished mass and various degrees of plasticity). The mass of it will turn out snow-white and velvety.
You will also need to get PVA glue - always with D 1 plasticizer, a little water, fat cream, citric acid and glycerin (opinions differ - someone adds this ingredient, someone doesn't).
The methods for preparing the mass are also different - you can boil the mixture, but you can do only by kneading. Let's consider all the options, and everyone will be able to choose the right one for themselves.
DIY porcelain at home
For him, you need to take:
- Fragrance-free vaseline or liquid paraffin - 1 tablespoon.
- Corn starch (if not, then use potato for the test) - 2 tablespoons.
- 2.5 tablespoons of soda.
- The desired shades of watercolor.
- A bottle of PVA glue with a capacity of 35 ml.
In a dry clean plate, mix starch and petroleum jelly, carefully grinding. Next, add soda, mix again.
Then add a little glue here a little, watching the density and ductility of the mass - ideally, it should turn out to be plastic and soft. Now apply the cream on your hands and carefully knead the resulting lump until a homogeneous texture is obtained.
Before making a rose from cold porcelain, it is necessary to color it. Apply watercolor, lip gloss, pastel and even cocoa powder!
First, you need to determine how much mass will go to one or another part of the flower, and then divide everything into pieces and individually add to each dye. Storage should be carried out in packaged form, in bags or jars. Some time after manufacturing, porcelain scattering can be observed, it is very simple to fix it. It is necessary to add a drop of cream and stretch the entire lump.
This manufacturing option is perfect for children's needlework, because it does not require laborious manipulations and a long time.
The second option for cooking cold porcelain with cooking
This method is much more complicated, but as a result, the mass is almost the same as the purchased one. So, let's begin:
- The main ingredient here will be glue - it must contain D 1 plasticizer. It is sold in building materials stores.
- Next, you need starch and better if it is rice or corn. The whiteness and velvety of your porcelain is guaranteed!
- Nivea cream in a blue tin box is the best option.
- Johnsons baby oil is another indispensable component. It is possible to replace it with petroleum jelly, but in the first one there is coconut oil, and this is an excellent softener.
- Powdered citric acid.
We measure out 100 ml of glue and the same amount of starch - by volume (this is more convenient to do in a measuring cup). Next, add 4 more teaspoons of starch without a slide.
Be sure to cook in a container with a very massive and thick bottom, otherwise porcelain will burn:
- Here we pour glue, half a teaspoon of cream, a quarter of a spoon of citric acid powder and a full spoon of oil.
- Turn on a low level of fire and, constantly mixing, cook until the first bubbles and dissolve the cream.
- Pour half a glass of starch and knead, then pour the leftovers.
- Constantly interfering, we collect everything in the center of the tank, forming a lump. It’s easy to check for readiness - you need to press the whole resulting lump with a spoon and raise it sharply. Finished porcelain will simply fall off the spoon, and undercooked will stick.
- Lightly sprinkle porcelain board with starch and put the mass here. Allow to cool.
It is advisable at this time to wash the dishes and hands using a conventional dishwashing detergent. Before working with porcelain, lubricate dry hands with cream or petroleum jelly and begin to knead. The result is a plastic, soft and velvety substance. The porcelain remaining after work is stored in a plastic bag for about a month.
Necessary accessories and additional materials
To create a rose from cold porcelain in a master class, you will need to acquire the following tools:
- Set of buns with big and small balls.
- Rolling pin or cylindrical object.
- Tweezers with rounded tips.
- Scissors.
- Pliers.
- Wire.
- PVA glue.
- Acrylic paints or decorative cosmetics for coloring petals.
- Acrylic varnish for fixing the finished parts of the composition.
Be sure to prepare wet wipes to wipe your hands during the rose making process.
Cold porcelain for beginners is easy to prepare, but constantly monitor the cleanliness of your fingers. Each speck will be clearly visible on a snow-white background and will make the craft sloppy.
Description of the job of creating a flower for beginners
There are many different ways to make flowers and buds. All craftswomen have their own proven methods, using convenient tools for them.
Let's create a rose from cold porcelain, a master class with a detailed description is given below. In this case, special devices will be required. For work, prepare:
- A small amount of cold porcelain painted in white and green - cook in any way described above, or purchase ready-made.
- Floristic wire of different thicknesses is thicker to make a rose stem from cold porcelain, and thinner for cuttings of leaves.
- A tube of fat cream.
- Several forms of "leaves" with veins.
- Tape tape.
- Bottle of PVA glue - for assembling roses from cold porcelain.
- Paper napkins or foil.
- Knife with a curly edge.
- Brush.
We create a rose from cold porcelain according to the master class below:
- Attach a crumpled napkin smeared with glue to the thicker wire - stalk. This is the core of the flower.
- Then, plucking small pieces from a piece of porcelain, roll them into a ball and flatten them with a special bulka - a ball on a stick. Do not make excessively thick parts; they crack when dried. Do not forget about the constant lubrication of hands and tools with cream so that the mass does not stick. Do not be afraid to make the edges of the petals too thin, they can even be torn a little - this will give the flower a natural vibrant appearance.
- We smear the edge of the first petal with glue and fix it on a napkin - core, wrapping it.
- Also form the following petals, alternately gluing them, as if partially overlapping each other, and moving in a circle. The size of the flower depends on your preference - someone likes blooming roses, someone likes buds.
- At the end of all work on creating petals, we proceed to the sepals and stems with leaves. The receptacle is molded from porcelain in a green hue. First, glue the bottom leaves, and then from the piece of green mass make the base of the flower.
- For the leaves, small pieces of porcelain are taken, knead "pancake" and cut out. They are pressed to a silicone mold, forcing a leaf vein. A thin wire is placed along the thickest one and pasted over with a piece of porcelain, stretching along the length. Having made 3 of the same sheet, they are fastened together into one, fixed on the stem and left to dry for about 24 hours.
So we made one beautiful rose!
But it is not necessary to buy special tools and forms for work. Great flowers are created with just one finger.
A very miniature rose is easily made using a pin with a bead. First, make a few pea-sized balls. Then they are rolled with a pin bead. It will also serve as the basis for the flower - all the petals are glued on top.
Giving the necessary colors to the flowers
For coloring products in bright colors, food colors, acrylic or special pigments and pastels are excellent.
To obtain the desired color of porcelain, dyes are added to it immediately after manufacture and kneading, and then everything is kneaded again. This is necessary in order to obtain a uniform color.
Cold tinted roses can be tinted on the finished product. They do this by applying food-grade paint with cotton buds directly to dried porcelain. Colors are more saturated and dense. To fix the paint, the product must be held above boiling water for 1-2 minutes.
They also use oil paint, creating gradient transitions and flowing colors with it. This gives the porcelain buds a natural, lively look.
Porcelain Composition Care
In order to preserve the pristine beauty of the product for a long time, it is important to properly care for it:
- This is the most important - cold porcelain is very afraid of water! Naturally, a few drops will not ruin the product, but with a long exposure to moisture, the flower will collapse.
- Cold porcelain products have high strength. Even falling from a certain distance, the flower will not break. But every material has “mechanical fatigue”. If you work on the craft for a long time, you can break it.
- To clean such flowers is possible only in a dry way - with napkins, a stiff brush. The best option would be a special panicle, which is electrified and attracts dusty deposits.
- Temperature changes on porcelain flowers do not have much effect. But it is noticed that under the influence of subzero temperature the material becomes more fragile.
- In the event of a flower breakdown, do not get upset - just use glue and connect the parts of the product, trying to make the seam as invisible as possible.