Sunday, July 25, 2010

Clay: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly.



In my last post I showed you the two polymer clay characters our granddaughters made for me.
Our seventeen year old made "Dee-Dee", with the purple hair.
And our thirteen year old made the French, "Mi-Mi", with the blue hair.
It was my job to bake them, since the girls had to leave that night.



A couple of years ago, our now thirteen year old granddaughter, gave me this foot that she'd made out of clay. I thought I'd stick it in there too, since it had never been baked.
It looked so cool - like marble!



I baked them at 250 degrees for thirty minutes.
(Along with Black Dog, which the oldest girl made, and a face which the youngest made.)
Then I left them in the pan to cool, before touching them. They're very breakable when they're hot.



Apparently, not all clay can be baked!!
I'm so sad. I loved that foot! :(



I finally got my supplies together and began a practice-version of my pal,
"Mel-Mel" and "Ga-Ga". (That would be me.)
I wanted them as tiny as the original Mel-Mel.



New tools! Yay!!



I began by kneading the clay to make it soft.



At this point, Ga-Ga is looking a lot like Charlie Brown to me. Yikes!



Looking better!
My idea was to leave the faces blank, so that I could paint expressions on them, depending on what they were doing. I was going to use erasable pens, but they didn't 'erase'. Dangit!
My new idea is to paint the faces using Acrylic Paints.
I know they'll have the same expressions forever... like Botox Babes.
Oh well.


Ta Da! It's Ga-Ga!!



And here comes Mel-Mel!!



Her first hair-cut.



And here they are!! Best buddies!



I baked them and introduced them to the other characters.
They hit it off immediately!
I made a couple of hand-bags and a doggie blanket with some of the left-over clay.
(I love reverting back to kid-hood!:)

To stand Dee-Dee and Mi-Mi up and keep them from falling over, because their hair makes them top-heavy, (I can relate) I stuck Museum Putty under their feet.
Keeping this in mind, before I baked Mel-Mel and Ga-Ga, I really pushed the clay down hard, trying to make their feet flat (I can relate).
It worked great on Mel-Mel, but I had to squish Ga-Ga down a couple more times.



Note to self:
Always take a good close look at the rear of a character, before baking it!!
This is either a really ugly butt in need of some major squats, or they're saggy panty-hose!
Maybe I'll just photograph her from the front.



Here they are with the "Star", the original and petite Mel-Mel.
My big paws just couldn't make them any smaller.
It should be interesting trying to paint their faces! Yikes!!

Our granddaughters promised to make their version of Mel-Mel and Ga-Ga, for me!
And I can't wait!!

Let's get this party started!!



Signing off for now,
gabriele



6 comments:

  1. Those are so cute!!! Creative too! I should get some modeling clay for my kids to play with.

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  2. Hi Provident Woman,

    Yes! Do get them for your kids!
    It keeps them quiet and engrossed for a long time.
    And it's really relaxing for us adults (who've never grown up:).

    Let me know how they turn out!

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  3. Hello Gabriele
    Thanks so much for stopping at the Back Porch. You missed the links. I always add links to the blogs I mention. They are hightlighted in green. Just clicking the blog name will take you to Terri and Sue's blogs.

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  4. Lol nice, they're quite talented. Those things are down-right cute.

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  5. Hey, Mike,
    Thanks for taking the time to check this out and for the compliments!
    And I keep forgetting to congratulate you on being voted a "Blog of Note"!!! Holy Cow!! That's quite a feat!! Congrats!!

    Later -

    ReplyDelete