Merry Christmas !!

Ho Ho Ho!! Merry Christmas to all..Christmas is here, the season of spreading love and joy. It’s the most wonderful time of the year ..Here’s wishing you all from the full team of www.craftsneed.com , May all the sweet magic of Christmas conspire to gladden your hearts and fill every desire.

My Today’s post is all about Christmas..So let me first show you what I have in my treasure this Christmas for you all.

Did you like it? Honestly I completely loved making it .Let me take you through some close ups followed by instructions.

Instructions:  For jar project and cupcake, I have used polymer clay and Thai clay by Craftsneed. Believe me its super soft and ideal for baking as well. While polymer clay needs to be baked , Thai clay is an air dry clay which doesn’t needs any baking process. Here I will describe how to work with both.

For Polymer clay – I took desired color and straight after opening the packet passed it through my pasta machine. The pasta machine has two rollers through which clay passes and extrudes out as a flat sheet. All pasta machines have roller settings  which helps in getting required thickness or thinness of the clay sheets. I passed my clay approximately four times through the machine to smooth en it up (This is also known as curing process)and get perfect finished texture. After that I started cutting it into desired shapes and sticking layers as and when required. As the clay is still not baked , it’s still sticky to hold layers without any glue.

 Once finished with the polymer clay embellishments, now we need to bake it to make it sturdy . To bake polymer clay creations, we need an oven that can be accurately programmed to generate temperatures between 215°F (102°C) to 325°F (163°C). This range is sufficient to bake any polymer clay item. You can use a regular oven, a toaster or a convection oven BUT not a microwave oven. I will still suggest if you are a first timer, try baking smaller pieces first. I have used parchment sheet under my baking objects. So preheat the oven and place the clay objects inside. Heating time depends on the thickness of the clay project. I baked for 30 minutes.

Polymer is quite soft when removed from the oven. It needs to be cooled completely to reach its final hardness. When polymer clay is cured correctly, the cooled pieces will be difficult to break, but if it is thin it might bend easily.

Thai clay: Now I will describe the process of Thai clay as well…rest all same till curing and sticking layers to clay, after that we need not to bake it. It is an air dry clay, so just leave it overnight to gain strength.

After my clay pieces were ready I stuck some pearl embellishments with the help of clear glue. I also did a small Christmas card with the help of Dies,stamps and much loved Zig colors and adding that snow effect with the help of snowflake paste.

I have put diamond dust in the jar first as base which will also hold my clay embellishments. I have not stuck my clay pieces to dust in the jar but I feel that can be done if needed.

Below is list of supplies I have used for this full project.

1           .    Glass jar, A small tray, pebbles

2           .    Polymer/Thai clay by Craftsneed : Red,Green,Orange,White and Black

3           .    Pearl embellishments

4           .    Clear glue

5           .    Diamond dust by Twinklets

6           .    Clay tools By Craftsneed

7           .    Pasta machine,Oven and parchment sheet

8           .    Spellbinders Christmas tree die

9           .    White cardstock

1           .  Snowflake paste

1           .   Stamp from my besties

1           .  Zig colors

All supplies are available at www.craftsneed.com . You can always place a preorder .

Hope you enjoyed it. Please leave love and comments below.

Crafty hugs,

Anushree