Polymer Clay Skulls

I absolutely love these skull beads! I see them everywhere on Etsy and I have resisted buying them. It took me 10 minutes to find a seller that wasn’t in China!
This week I discovered this stunning polymer clay sugar skull on Etsy and it hit me…I could make my own skull beads!!! These decorated skull are amazing!!!It was so easy and I have a TON of polymer clay. I think they turned out great.I also made some chocolate bunnies (pinterest project), some art doll faces, and some cupcake charms/pins.I’m not finished yet, I have to “frost” the rest of the cupcakes, paint the pink on the bunnies, and try embellishing some of the skulls. Now that everything is all out I have a lot of little things I want to try.

Polymer Clay Cupcakes Mini Tutorial

You know I love cupcakes and so I was super excited to try to make my own mini cupcakes.

For the tutorial you will need polymer clay, glass head pins, flat head pins, translucent liquid Scuplty (TLS), various sized wire nuts, and amazing mold putty. I am going to assume that everyone has basic knowledge of working with polymer clay and some basic tools on hand.

We will start by using the wire nuts and the amazing mold putty to make molds for the cupcake bottoms. The bottoms can be made by hand by rolling a cylinder and making vertical lines on the sides, but I wanted easy and consistent. Amazing mold putty is easy to use, although it is a bit expensive (note the $19.99 price sticker, use a coupon!!!). The molds a flexible making it easy to pop the polymer clay out without using a releasing agent, like cornstarch. Scrap clay may also be used to make molds, but it won’t be flexible and you will need to coat the inside to make the clay easy to remove.

Mix the two parts of the putty together (check the package for more precise instructions), form into a ball and push the wire nut into the putty. Wire nuts are used to secure electrical wires and can be purchased at any hardware store. The impressions I made were so precise that the writing on the bottom of the nuts can be read on the molded clay. Once the putty is cured you can mold cupcake bottoms endlessly. The wire nuts make a tapered, perfectly fluted bottom.

To make decorative stick pins mold a cupcake bottom and then insert a glass head pin through the center. You can see the yellow heads here, they will be covered with the frosting in the next step. Glass head pins are a must since these need to go into the oven to cure. To make charms add a rounded “muffin” top to the bottom and insert a flat head pin.

I made two different kinds of frosting. Piped, which is clay rolled into a “snake” and coiled up to a point and frosted with a glass bead cherry on top. To make frosting mix a small amount of polymer clay with a small amount of TLS using you fingers to really mix the two together to get a nice frosting texture. I used a mini popsicle stick to spread my frosting on my cupcakes.

I stuck my pins into my poly filled pins cushion to bake for the recommended time. I have to say the the light pink ones are my favorite, but they are all really fun. You can sand the finished pieces (I didn’t) and add a coat of sealer. I’m going to dip mine in triple thick glaze and maybe sprinkle on some glitter or micro beads, but I needed to photograph them before I did that, they are so shiny after dipping its hard to get a clear picture of them.

I’d love to see your finished cupcakes if you give this tutorial a try. Have a super crafty weekend!

Cupcake Baby

I have been working on a new baby hat design using knitting and crochet.  In fact, this design has been sitting in my knitting bag waiting for the cherry to be sewn on the top for a couple of months.  Now for the perfect test, how will it work on a brand new baby.This little set has a cupcake hat, cupcake swaddling blanket, and it’s in a cupcake reusable gift bag, I really like cupcakes!  There is also a cupcake purse (like this) for the new big sister.

P.S. Congratulations Lisa and Josh!

Cupcake Purse Samples

Everyone needs a cupcake purse, right?  After seeing crocheted cupcake purses on Ravelry I just had to make my own.  I started out with the basic pattern (this pattern is for a cradle purse, I just skipped all the interior elements and made a plain purse) and added an extra fuchsia frill around the middle.  I really like how the bottom part looks, the front and back post double crochet really mimics a knitted look, but is sooooo much faster.  The bottom did seem a little wimpy though and once it’s filled with girly stuff it doesn’t stand up as nice, hmmmm, I guess I’ll make another one and add some more frills, oh and beads too! I made two bottoms for this one and added plastic canvas in between the layers to make a nice sturdy bottom that would stand up and help the cupcake keep its shapes.  I added pony beads to my yarn before I started to crochet and then crocheted them into the “frosting” at regular intervals.  I also did more single crochet through the back loop only to allow me to add extra frills around the center and at the top.  This is exactly what I going for, now who needs a cupcake purse?

All I Can Do Is Crochet

Wednesday morning at 10:30, while trying to decide what I was going to write about for my blog, I decided that I needed to make Little Miss a cute summer top, something with knitting or crochet.  I popped over to ravelry and 10 minutes later was printing the pattern and picking the yarn.  By lunchtime the crocheting was done (we had lunch a little late) and it was time to start the sewing.  The sewing was going well, but I had to stop to go pick up Little Sir from school, and that’s when things started going wrong. 

Apparently I had left the lights on in the car all day and the battery was dead, did I mention that I am a week from my due date and walking is not something I want to do?  Oh well, so we walked to pick him up, luckily it’s not to far to his school and we got there right on time.  Back at home snacks were eaten and kids were playing and I was Googling to find a repair shop that would come and jump start the car when something went horribly wrong with the computer, a virus attack, oh nooooooo, but I just renewed my anti-virus!  Yeah, so now the computer is pretty much useless (I have managed to fix it, but it took me a couple of days and a lot of cussing).

I won’t bore you with more about all this, but there has been a lot of walking and a lot of whining (from me).  Anyway back to the crochet, the top is finished and cute, yay, something went right.  Wow, crocheting is a lot faster than knitting, maybe I should make something else, like that cupcake purse that has been on my list for a while (that was yesterday).  By yesterday evening the purse was almost finished (must weave in ends) and another idea had hit me, what if I made this with crochet thread and a tiny hook and made it into a bottle cap pin cushion? I can’t find my brown thread, but oh well, white will work, and before bedtime I had this, almost finished, but it still needs something…like a cherry…hmmmm, use a bead or crochet one… Oh and now that I’ve made it once I want to make it again, only different and better, with felt and beads and I really need to get started on it now so I can finish up before dinner.  And a giant one would be cool too, with sprinkles and glitter, I could use a vinegar bottle for a hard base and paint it brown, and speaking of glitter I want to glitter some shoes, and that reminds me, I need a shoe rack, and, and, and…

Yeah, and this is exactly how my mind works, is this how everyone’s brain works or am I “special”?  And before I forget, I used the top half of this crochet halter top pattern (PDF) as my base and added the fabric and I used this cupcake cradle purse as a starting point for my cupcake purse without cradle.

Have a super crafty weekend!

Progress, Lots of Progress

It has been a busy week here, School is off for spring break and we have been enjoying some nicer weather, there was even time to fly kites!  I have been working on TONS of crafty stuff, but I can’t seem to actually finish anything and what is finished I can’t share, yet. This is finished, the painted owls have been successfully cut and sewn and they ended up exactly like I pictured.  I opted to not outline them on the recommendation of comments here and on twitter, see I did use some of that pink shirt. Here is my top secret project (yeah, I know super blurry, but I had to cropped it super small).  I’m really excited about this one and I will have a tutorial for this with a downloadable design.  I have another top secret project in the works that involves a bucket, but I haven’t had time to start that one yet. Polymer clay cupcake charms, I have been all over town looking for micro beads so I can make some of these with sprinkles. I also have been making decorative pins with polymer clay.  I made a mold to make the bottoms of the cupcakes, super easy and super quick!  I need to make another batch and take some more photos so I can put together a tutorial.  These are part of a new project that I will hopefully be launching soon.Wool crochet, now I just need to felt this one and sew it all together, I’m not sure how this one is going to work out.

I have dismantled an old VHS tape and am working on a small sample project too.  As you can see, my big pink belly has started to creep into my photo shoots, I normally edit it out, but I thought I would leave it in this time.  I am at the beginning of month nine (give or take two weeks) and things are starting to get interesting around here.  I have two little people asking almost every day if the baby is still in my tummy, I’m frantically trying to finish every craft project I’ve wanted to do right now!, I’m trying to do some home improvements/repairs, and I want to landscape my yard…there is a really long list of things that I wanted to have done before the baby gets here, it’s really pretty wild, I don’t know what it is about being pregnant that makes it seem like there won’t be time to do at least some of this stuff after the baby gets here.  And the big issue is that we haven’t decided on a name.

Today we are just going to lounge around at home, I think I might wear my jammies all day and maybe I can finish one more project (or maybe I’ll start another one ;-D )  Ohh, and I’m taking name suggestions and also looking for guest bloggers to post Mid-April-ish, (whenever I have the baby), let me know if you’re interested!

Awesome Cupcakes of Doom!

I have finished my felt cupcakes for Little Miss, you will notice that only half of them have bead sprinkles.  After beading them for two nights and only getting three done, I just couldn’t make myself do all six.The sprinkles are super sparkly and I hope she likes them.  I guess if it is really a big issue with her I can always go back and bead the three plain ones.Happy Holidays everyone, I’ll see you guys next week!

How Long Does it Take to Make Cupcakes?

Apparently quite a while.  I was expecting to show you the first set of six cupcakes today, however, they aren’t quite finished.  I’m blaming Facebook, an old friend from art school found me and we spent the afternoon catching up.

I have finished the cupcakes and wrappers.

I did not flute the wrappers and instead used tie-dyed felt (who knew there was such a thing?).  I might even add some hot pink rick rack around the middle to make them fancier! 

I have started on the frosting, the pieces are cut out and sewn together, but the hand sewing and stuffing has just begun.

It reminds me of hot pink poo.  They’re really going to be bright and fun.  I just need to decide what color of bead sprinkles I’m going to add, silver, pink, orange?  Help me decide.  I’m hoping to accomplish more on these later, I would like to get the other batch of six finished this weekend, so I can check this off my list.