Now it’s fashionable to decorate your living space with handmade products. Often this does not require special expenses, it would be time and desire to create. Materials for arts and crafts can be easily purchased at the store or ordered online. Natural materials are widely used, you just need to see their capabilities: what is hidden under an intricate bottle gourd, what do cones look like?
You can get down to business with the children, making houses of polymer clay. They can be of various shapes and sizes - round, square, in the form of a teapot, fly agaric, strawberry or apple.
What are the houses
If there is a house, then someone should live in it. In the front garden of a private house, a dwelling is set up. Often, mice or frogs choose it for themselves, if there is a bowl of water nearby that depicts a lake. In the evening in such a small tower you can light a light by putting a candle inside. If the house is designed so that the hand does not pass into it, it will be difficult to do. Therefore, care should be taken in advance about how to get objects or animals that got there.
Small houses made of polymer clay are hung on trees to attract birds. Then they act as a feeding trough. They also find application in flower gardens. It is very convenient to put them in place of already faded daffodils or dug up tulips.
In the apartment, such houses are placed between flower pots, in the kitchen they put tea bags, and very small ones can serve as salt shakers or needle cases.
Pumpkin houses
Natural materials always find their application in the master. Decorative lagenariums in the form of a bottle can become the basis for a round house with a removable roof. Food can be stored in such a pumpkin, before it was used as a container for butter or milk. It does not allow light to enter, but retains natural moisture.
For one house you will need two small pumpkins. One will be the roof. Procedure:
- Cut the fruit, remove the pulp, dry the resulting containers.
- Trim spruce or pine cones - tiles will be made from their scales.
- The pumpkin base is filled with something to give stability.
- On the part that will be the roof, glue the tile from the cones. Start from the bottom row and move up.
- A window, a door, roses, leaves are made of polymer clay. All parts are baked in the oven according to the instructions that came with the package.
- Clay clay parts using a glue gun.
- Paint the house with acrylic paints.
- Water-based sealant coat the work.
If the roof is not removable, then it can be glued. But you still have to use two pumpkins and remove the pulp from them.
Cottage houses
Did not find a suitable pumpkin? No problem! You can make fabulous houses from cans and polymer clay. To do this, you need a jar with a screw cap. You can take a half liter. Polymer clay will go away more than for a pumpkin house. We will need stacks for applying texture, foil.
Procedure:
- A volume ball is rolled up from the foil.
- They force it into the jar with the lid on. Get a deepening.
- Glue a ball of foil to the lid.
- From the ball, the desired shape of the mushroom cap is molded - pointed, round or with curved fields.
- Unscrew the lid and cover the mushroom cap with a thin layer of polymer clay, making the mushroom structure on the inside of the cap with stacks in the form of plates or sponges.
- The clay is rolled out and applied to the jar, completely covering it. If not enough for the bottom, make a patch.
- They cut a window through the stacks, draw shutters, a door, a house number. They mold a pipe and imitate brickwork on it. They make a visor above the door, but do not attach it.
- Pour into a jar of water and put in the oven. The roof of the house and small details are placed nearby. Bake according to instructions.
- They collected everything they did, they glued a visor and a pipe. The finished house is painted with acrylic, after drying, covered with acrylic varnish.
If you use gouache, then it will spread under the varnish. Some watercolor colors too. If there are no acrylics, PVA glue is added to gouache.
How to bake polymer clay in the oven
Beginners do not dare to bake the product. But unburnt clay is a fragile thing. To reliably fix your work, you need to withstand it at high temperature. At first there may be a marriage - if the clay is crossed, it will burn and become covered with bubbles. If you remove the product ahead of time, it will not bake inside and become brittle.
For the process to be successful, all the details should not be thicker than one centimeter. Better then glue the product from many elements. Burn them by planting on a toothpick. A crumpled foil is spread at the bottom of the pan and just stick toothpicks into it. Large parts are laid out on paper, which is lined with a baking sheet. The usual office A4 format will do.
The baking temperature depends on the brand of clay. For Fimo, this is 110 degrees and the time is 30 minutes. To know exactly what temperature in the oven, you should purchase a thermometer. Prototypes are also baked and checked for kinks. Then, for fragile products, the temperature is increased, and for burnt products, they are reduced.
Master Class
Polymer clay houses are a fascinating view not only of creativity, but also of relaxation. In the video, the master of arts and crafts talks about his dreams while working. After several successful experiments with clay, a skill will come, and during modeling you will be visited only by pleasant thoughts: about a dream house and how to live in it well. Positive energy will certainly appear in the finished work.
Such work can be done with children. Give them simple details.
Conclusion
If it’s hard to decide on a big job, you can make miniature houses made of polymer clay. For the base use foil, wrinkled in the form of a rectangle or pear. It’s easy to apply a layer of clay to such a small blank. Many small details are usually not made on such things, and this simplifies the work even more.
Try buying polymer clay packaging in the creative department. And you will have the opportunity to feel like a real creator.