Salaric

For these heart beads I mixed up the appropriate colours to create the textures out of fimo soft (polymer clay). I then rolled each texture into sausages of fimo and cut them into millimetre-thick discs. Following this, I aligned these into a wonky square and used my finger to squidge the discs together. I then took a straight high-sided glass and used it as a rolling pin.

I had to keep moving the sheet of fimo I was rolling, otherwise it sticks to the glass or the worktop. Once the sheet was uniformly thin (as much as you can get a uniform thickness by hand - some people use pasta machines for this but I have not tried this myself yet) I used medium-sized aspec cutters that I got from Almond Sugar Crafts.

I then used a paper clip I had bent out of shape to poke a hole just below the point where the heart plunges at the top. Following that, I carefully placed the heart beads onto a baking tray and baked them for 30 minutes at 130 degrees C in our kitchen oven. These look good on earrings and on ribbons around presents. They are a great way to use up spare bits of fimo and for adorning things for weddings and Valentine’s day. If you don’t put a hole in them they can be used as generic craft bits or as re-usable table confetti for romantic meals. The polymer clay also survives second bakings so the hearts can be added to other projects.

Me and my two year old made this castle for her nursery’s “Prince and Princesses” week. I have split how I did this into three posts called:

• Making the skeleton of a castle
• Making a tissue mâché castle
• Painting a tissue mâché castle

This is how I made the ’skeleton’ or framework of the castle:

We used one small box (about 15cm across) that electronic components had been delivered in, four loo roll innards or tubes, masking tape, scissors and wooden lolly sticks.

We cut strips of masking tape and then taped the lolly sticks around the loo roll innards but with the lolly sticks slightly proud of the top of the tube, to make the turrets of the castle. The loo roll tubes were going to be the towers. Jean helped a lot with the taping.

Once all the lolly sticks were in place I wrapped the whole thing in masking tape to get rid of all the tatty ends - which, as a two year old was helping, there were a lot of.

We repeated the process with the other three loo roll innards until we had four towers ready and waiting.

I then attached the towers to the corners of the box using the masking tape - this was actually quite fiddly and they still moved a bit precariously after I had fixed them to the box.

To try and make it more secure and because at this point I hadn’t yet thought about doing the paper mâché, I covered the entire structure in masking tape as I thought it would make a better surface to paint.

I ended up with a masking tape tower.

This vase was partially designed from leftovers and partially based on mineral textures you find in rocks. It was made using a Sainsbury’s Basic’s glass; orange, egg yoke yellow, mint green and forest green fimo soft. I also used another glass with straight sides as a rolling pin, a chopping board, a plastic sculpting tool with an angled flat blade, and a penknife - plus our oven and baking tray.

To make the green swirls I actually used the off-cuts from around a Christmas tree cookie cutter. I was using the tree shapes primarily, and then when I saw the off-cuts I thought they would look perfect as the sort of ‘veining’ you get in mineral formations - though I must say here I was thinking more about how rocks look in thin slices under the microscope with various filters on them. I was also working with meteorites specifically at the time and so had unusual patterns lodged in my head that begged to be used artistically.

To get the texture I simply cut up the dark green fimo and then squidged it all back together to get it in a nice manageable consistency; I then did the same with the light green. I rolled the colours into two different sausages which I then put next to each other and rolled together. Then I folded the two tone sausage in half and half again. I rolled it into a smooth shape, pinching the ends where I had folded it off, in order to make beads and shells. I then cut the sausage into discs about 1.5mm thick which I arranged into a sort of wonky square. Obviously there were gaps between each of the discs but I used my fingers to try and squidge the discs a bit without distorting the colours too much. This sort of fuses the edges of the discs together.

Once this was done I took a high-sided glass and used it as a rolling pin, making sure that I moved the now sheet of patterned fimo around, otherwise it sticks to the glass rolling pin or the surface that you are working on. The rolling action helps fuse the discs into a sheet nicely - some people use a pasta machine to roll sheets of fimo but I have never tried this personally, so have no idea how well it works.

As I said earlier I then cut out Christmas trees from this and used the off-cuts for this vase. I had lots of bumpy stripes which I wrapped around a glass as a series of rings - I wanted it to be quite natural-looking so the rings were quite irregular. A bit of gentle pressure with a finger pad meant I could blend the fimo into nice continous rings rather than having an abrupt and obvious join, but you have to be careful not to blur the colours in doing this.

Once I had done this I made an orange and yellow fimo sausage which I again cut into discs, but this time I put the discs straight onto the glass and squidged them, smoothing over the bits where they touched each other and the green rings. I covered the entire glass at the rim, overlapping the edge of the glass so that the fimo disc went inside. Once it was entirely covered I took the sculpture tool and ran it around the inside of the glass to get rid of the excess fimo - this left a nice neat rim around the top with a clean interior. I then signed the bottom of the vase and using another high-sided straight glass, I rolled around the vase to help remove fingerprints. Then I placed the finished vase onto the baking tray.

I then baked it for 30 minutes at 130 degrees C.

For all of those who know me and would shoot me if this wasn’t on here!

I make little contemporary figurines called Wiggly Pets; they have their own website but it needs a bit of work on it. I will be posting the link as soon as it is ready. They will also shortly be appearing in their own comic strip on an e-zine but more on that later (ie when I know all the fine details). I have sold a few of these little creatures and they are present now in over six countries!

They are made of polymer clay - mainly FIMO soft, which comes in many colours and textures. Next time I nurse the wiggly woos (baby wiggly pets) to maturity I will take photos of them hatching and the different developmental stages.

But until such times are upon us I feel that the wiggly pets would like you all to know about their new community blog which can be found at http://www.wigglypets.co.uk/. They have lots of adventures and wanted to share them with everybody, I’ve taken most of the photos too, which hopefully will soon be available as postcards for people to purchase.

I made this plinth out of fimo (polymer clay) for one of our nice largish glass marbles. I was aiming for a nice marbled effect, plus I wanted it to look strangely organic and mineral-like at the same time.

I chose black fimo and metallic silver fimo in about equal amounts. I mixed the two colours together, making sure I folded the colours together as well as just squidging the resulting blob. This resulted in a nice marbled texture.

I then rolled the whole lot into a fat sausage about 1.5cm in diameter, followed by squishing one end of it onto the table, making it flare out and stabilise the structure. I then pinched out a rim from the other end, using my thumb and index finger - this formed itself naturally into the sort of bowl shape I had intended. Easing the whole lot off the table and signing the bottom, I baked it in a pre-heated over for half an hour at 130 degrees C.

I made this vase by covering a hi-ball glass in fimo (polymer clay) and then baking it so the fimo went hard.

I created the swirly texture by squidging my selected colours of fimo to make them soft. The colours I used were:

*Red *Orange *Glittery gold/yellow *Green *Blue *White

I then rolled each colour into a sausage, except for the white, which I rolled into a number of sausages as it was to be mixed with all the other colours!

I then took the blue sausage and mixed it with a white sausage, the half and half sausage was then folded in half and in half again, and rolled back into a thin sausage. I then sliced the sausage up into mm thick discs. I did the same for the other colours, mixing each with white to give some sort of continuity to the vase.

I then started at the top of the glass and squidged two layers of the blue and white discs around the glass. I made sure that the fimo was squidged over the rim. I then did two layers of green and white, followed by two layers of gold and white. Then the orange and white - again orange and white. With the red and white, however, I just covered the rest of the glass in it, as it was mostly the base of the glass.

I made sure the fimo on the base was slightly thicker than the rest of the vase as this is where I sign them by slashing my signature into the fimo with a sculpting tool. I then rolled another glass around the vase to smooth the fimo as there are always lots of fingerprints present in the surface.

I then scraped around the rim of the vase to remove the excess fimo whilst leaving the rim covered neatly.

I then baked it in the oven for half an hour (30 minutes) at 130 degrees C.

I made this monitor decoration for my mum. I used strange almost fluorescent-coloured polymer clay, specifically fimo soft. I used blue for the base, pink for the flower and yellow for the middle. Also needed was a green matchstick for the stem and a sticky pad to turn it into a monitor decoration!

I shaped the blue fimo into a cone with the top slightly flattened, about 1.5cm in diameter at the base. The pink fimo I rolled into a sphere and then flattened it into a rough rose petal shape. The yellow fimo I rolled into a short fat sausage shape with very rounded ends.

I then wrapped the yellow sausage in the pink petal shape to create a flower that looked a bit like a lily.

I then pushed the green matchstick into the bottom of the flower and rolled the area to push the fimo in firmly and neatly around the stick.

I then punched the other end of the matchstick into the blue cone.

I then baked it in a pre-heated over at 130 degrees C for 1/2 hr (30 minutes). Once it had cooled, I pulled the stick out of the blue cone base and then added a bit of glue (UHU) on the stick and poked it back in the whole. This is necessary as the stick would eventually work itself loose, otherwise if it puts up a fight don’t worry about it!

Once the glue had dried I put a little two-sided sticky pad on the bottom so that it can be stuck to the computer monitor!

I made this little Easter basket for my husband’s birthday; it is made of fimo and is about 7cm in diameter. The fluffy chicks came from the Pound Shop.

These are the colours I mixed for the browns to make the twigs: dark brown, yellow, orange and beige.

I then rolled a sphere of the beige to make the base of the nest with.

I then began to flatten it into a disc.

I then rolled sausages of the different brown fimos - these are the twigs!

Then I pressed them gently around the edge of the base, making sure that the first ones arched a bit in the middle, leaving ‘free space’ to allow interweaving of the twigs.

I then chose three bright fimo colours - pink, blue and yellow, for the Easter eggs to go in the nest.

I sliced up the colours and then arranged them so that each egg would get one piece of each colour in different orders and patterns.

I then rolled the three colours into a sphere. I applied slightly more pressure to one end of the sphere whilst rolling it, in order to get the egg shape.

I only did three eggs in the end, as I thought it would look better when it was less crowded and with some fluffy chicks instead!

Ta da!

I made this Easter bonnet from fimo. There was no specific reason behind this project, I just had some extra fimo and in fact was going to make it into a pot but whilst shaping it, it turned mysterously into a hat!

First off I rolled the black fimo into a ball.

I then began shaping this ball into a hat shape. I did this by initially making a depression on the top of the ball and then pinching around this depression with my thumb and forefinger whilst rotating it.

I then had a satifactory hat shape!

I decided that I wanted a nice ribbon and some flowers on the hat (I did consider Easter chicks and the like, but the hat is actually quite small, so decided that though it might be a bit more Eastery, it was also a lot more fiddly).

I rolled a thin 0.5mm diameter sausage of yellow fimo for the ribbon and I also rolled some little balls of fimo to be the middles of the flowers. I then flattened the sausage of yellow fimo and fitted it around the hat, making sure the two ends overlapped and were shaped so that they looked like ribbon blowing in a breeze.

Warning, fimo and other polymer clays are quite brittle and therefore thin structures like the ribbon will be relatively fragile. This is why I made sure the ribbon would have contact with any surface the hat rests on.

I decided that three flowers would look good and rolled 2 balls of blue fimo about 2mm diameter, and one of pink. I gently used the pad of a finger to squash these balls into little discs.

I then placed the yellow bits of fimo in the middle of these discs and gathered them up in three to four little pleats around the yellow. This makes very effective little flowers.

I then put the flowers on the hat by gently pressing them onto the ribbon.

However, it looked over the top so I took two of the flowers off and the result was a lot more eye-pleasing in my opinion!

I made this pot of gold for St. Patrick’s Day for an Irish friend.

First off I got some black fimo and rolled a ball/sphere out of it, about 1.5cm in diameter.

I then made a slight depression in it - this would be where the gold coins would sit. I realised that I would not have to make a hollow pot as the coins cover up the black fimo underneath.

I then rolled three small spheres of black fimo about 6mm in diameter for the feet. I checked them against each other to see if they were all the same size. One of them was too far out, smaller than the other two, so I had to add some extra fimo. I then gently pushed the three small spheres onto the large sphere with the depression in, and the feet went on the opposite end to the depression. I had to reattach one foot as it was it was not equidistant from the other two, and in fact I didn’t get the feet completely right.

They should have been placed so that they make an equilateral triangle - ie so they are all the same distance apart - but I was in a rush so was not careful enough.

I then rolled a thin sausage of black fimo, making sure it was of uniform thickness all down its length. Using the pot itself, I measured around the depression with the fimo sausage and pinched off any extra sausage. I then attached the two ends of the sausage to each other. I smoothed and rolled the join so that it was no longer visible. This is a bit tricky and can end up with you twisting the sausage or ending up with thin and thick bits in the sausage, it takes a bit of practice!

I then place the rim on the pot, made sure it was in the desired position, and gently pushed it onto the pot to secure it.

I then rolled two tiny sausages of black fimo for the handles, about 5mm in length. I also tapered the ends of these sausages so that they ended in points.

I then curved them and pushed one gently onto the side of the pot, just under the rim. I checked to make sure that the handle was suitably aligned with the feet, and then repeated the process on the opposite side with the other handle.

I then broke off little bits of gold metallic fimo and rolled them into little balls. I flattened the balls between my thumb and forefinger to create little 3mm discs or coins.

I then laid these in the pot, making sure that all the black was covered underneath so it looked full of gold, and just to make it look more like it was overflowing, I made sure that one of the coins was overlapping the rim of the pot.

I then baked it in the oven for 30 mins (1/2 hour) at 130 degrees C. This hardens the fimo or polymer clay.