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