Followers

Saturday 21 February 2009

Making a Cauldron with Fimo or any polymer clay.

Quite often in the past i've searched high and low for miniature cauldrons with the end result being nothing suitable for my needs. They were either too big, too small, bad quality, too expensive and a never ending list of not quite right.
I've only been making miniatures for 2 years almost and so had to think of a way to make my own.
So after lots of wasted time, efort and money i just happened to have some plant pots infront of me and decided to cover them with clay. I've found this to be the best way to make cauldrons and cooking pots alongside a mixture of others.
You will need: polymer clay in any colour (will be painted later), skewer or cocktail stick, blade and a flower pot. You can also use a rounded straight modelling too but i don't.


Smudge bit of your fimo all over the pot so that later the fimo will stick to the pot. I just push bits on and smudge with my thumb so its all nice and flat and a thin layer. You dont have to do the whole pot, i dont.

Now roll up lots of long sausages making sure they are long enough to wrap around your pot. Dont worry about them all being the same lenghth because you will chop off whats not needed later and start to wrap them around your pot and press on lightly. Chop off whats not needed as shown in the picture. Where the pot needs to be fatter around the middle do a second layer of long thin sausages until you are happy the middle will be full and rounded.

Using a skewer or cocktail stick start rolling up and down the pot to squash all the sausages into each other, tryng not to loose your desired shape. Keep doing this until the surface is nice and smooth. I then just go all the way around with my finger and thumb to make it smooth ready for baking. Then bake. Once baked if you think some areas are sticking out more than other give them a sanding. Then coat you whole pot with a layer of black acrylic paint. When this is dry give it a second coat but this time stipple the paint so you creat a slightly rough texture lke used cast iron. To do this dab and dab with the brush all over. When dry you can stipple on more paint to bring out this texture more.
You dont have to use a flowere pot like i have here. If there is a pot you like the shape of you can cover that too with clay. Its a case of experimenting and sometimes the surface you will apply the clay to may need a coat of pva or even a sand down and a coat of pva. I've discovered poylmer sticks well to brass pots without any need for preparation. Wood is also fine and is safe to bake in the oven.
The pots showing below were made from unwanted copper pots and i removed the handles. These will have faces. I've made the arms with wire which i glued on with superglue before applying the polymer.
As usual please ignore all my spelling and typing mistakes... lol

Will be back in a while to show you how to make the pot look used and not so perfect.
Will also show you how to make handles.

3 comments:

  1. Thanks for the tutorial Nikki! Gives me a good idea of how to do some planters I need still to make. Your cauldrons are going to be so neat!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you Nikki for sharing this with us.

    ReplyDelete
  3. This is a great idea! Thank you for posting it. This is the first polymer clay cauldron project I have found, and I have to say that I love your idea :)

    ReplyDelete

Thank you for your comment xxx