Ceramic Reindeer Egg Decoration

Inspired by an Easter post on Kids Craft Room, which I had filed away for future use, I created this hand-painted Christmas decoration made from a ceramic egg yesterday. I managed to pick up a couple of sets of ceramic eggs from Hobbycraft in the sales after Easter and set them aside to use for Christmas. As you may have already noticed, I really like using egg shapes to make tree decorations. I suppose this is because they are easier than spheres to craft into animals and we are partial to cute animals in this house. 

I used acrylic paints throughout but I could definitely do with investing in some better acrylics at some point. The white and gold are a bit thin so coverage was poor and there was no way I was going to get a smooth finish. I decided that reindeers are pretty shaggy so I tried to embrace the texture! The ears, antlers and tail are painted card which have then been glued to the decoration using a cool glue gun and I painted over the join to conceal the glue. 

This little reindeer may well end up being the star attraction on my Christmas tree this year. I just love it!

Galt Beady Animals

This was a brillant buy for our summer crafting - Galt Beady Animals Kit - which I bought when it was half price on Amazon. The kit comes with three small ceramic animals, a spatula-type tool and six generous pots of beady modelling material. The modelling material is weird to touch but once you get used to it, it's fantastic to use. It claims to be mess-free but that really does depend on what you do with it! There's no chance of spillage and it is self-contained but I'd hate to see what happened if you managed to get a big lump of it in your hair or on your clothes! Anyway, you pick out small bits of the beady stuff and smooth it over the ceramic model. It's very pliable and really easy for little fingers to do. Once you're happy with your creature just let it air-dry for 24 hours and hey presto you have a unique and fabulous looking creation like Jessica's giraffe here...

I love Jessica's face on this one. She soon got used to it but the stuff really is a bit strange when you first start handling it...

This little giraffe hardly took any modelling material either so we're going to have tonnes left even when we've completed all three so we've bought a couple of other things to try it out on another time. Watch this space! Unfortunately the half price offer has finished on Amazon now but I think it's probably still worth a punt at full price if you fancy it.

Embossing on Ceramics

Please forgive me for the unseasonal timing of this post but there was no way I could wait until next Christmas to share this craft. I bought lots of ceramic decorations from Hobbycraft last Christmas and decided to try out something that we'd never done before. 

I have an embossing pen and ink pad that Jessica and I used to emboss onto the ceramics. It was brilliant. Jess loved tipping the powders over the ink and shaking them off as well as watching the magic of the melting under the heat gun. We did them all one colour at a time and were careful to have a large cork mat underneath because the ceramics get incredibly hot. These looked beautiful on the tree.

I was particularly tickled by Jessica's insistence that the snowmen all needed legs and I absolutely love her reindeer. That was my favourite decoration last year I think.

Paint Your Own Ceramics (Hobbycraft Kits)

Hobbycraft have a half price event running for half term (until Sunday 26th) so we will be heading over to one of their stores at some point in the next fortnight to grab ourselves a bunch of bargains to stash away for a rainy day or two. During another one of these half price events I bought Jessica a paint your own ceramic teddy bear money box. Brilliant value at £3 (full price) but completely irresistible at £1.50. The kits come with six paints and a paint brush. I also have Jess a little palette so that she could do some mixing of colours to satisfy her curiosity and brighten up her bear further.

I introduce Mrs Teddy Bear...

Katryn paints Peppa

Sometime in the past couple of months I picked up a “paint your own” Peppa pig moneybox from WHSmiths for the bargain price of £2.49. Katryn finally got around to painting it this morning. I have to say, it was an unusually good kit and I would definitely recommend it although possibly not for the 3 year olds that it’s “suitable” for. There were quite a few fiddly bits that Kat wanted help with and she’s pretty good with her hands. She did the vast majority herself though…

    

 

Oops Snooze, I seem to have painted some of Peppa’s head red…

Here’s the final product…