clay - Babiekins Magazine

Guest post by Natalie Walton.

After interviewing ceramicist Anna Eaves of Arrow + Sage recently for Daily Imprint, I spied some cute plant labels on her blog. I asked her if she didn’t mind me creating some with my son as a craft project. She was happy that I’d found inspiration in her work.

She fires her clay – which you can do if you go to a craft center. This means that the labels can stay in a plant pot and not deteriorate from exposure to water. However, if you just use air-drying clay you can insert the label in between the black plastic pot from the garden center and the ceramic plant pot you use at home, or use twine to wrap it around the outside. You could even create the labels as circular discs and use a skewer to create a hole on either side and thread string through to hang that way. These can work as nice gift labels too.

YOU WILL NEED
Air-drying clay
Knife
Rolling pin
Letter stamps
Bowl of water

INSTRUCTIONS
1. Cut a piece of clay about 5cm long by 2.5cm wide and roll until it’s about 2-3mm flat.
2. Using letter stamps, stamp your words before you trim the end.
3. Once you have trimmed the end to a point (to go into the soil) cut and roll your next piece so it’s approximately the same length. Repeat.
4. If you have access to a kiln, fire them. Otherwise, dry on a rack then paint to a colour of your choice.

Guest post by writer and stylist, Natalie Walton of The Indigo Crew. You may also find Natalie on Instagram.

Whenever we do a craft project at home, I always try to find a good balance between something that everyone can participate in, and a result that we will be happy to display or gift. Of course, sometimes it’s just fun to make a bit of mess but this time around I wanted to create something that the children could give to friends or teachers on Valentine’s Day. All three children (ages 6, 3 and 18 months) got involved in this one.

Materials//
Air drying clay
Cookie cutters in heart shapes
Rolling pin
Skewer
Glitter
Paint
Paint Brush
Baker’s twine
Scissors

Instructions//
1. After a recent visit to a chef supply store we found a selection of heart shaped cookie cutters and a letter set. This gave us the idea on what to do for our Valentine’s Day project this year.

2. We rolled out the air drying clay on baking paper (for easy clean-up afterwards) and used our cookie cutters to create various heart shapes. Some of them we decorated with stamps and created words using the end of a skewer.

3. For some of the hearts we applied glitter with a brush. Here we used a smaller shaped heart as a stencil. While we didn’t use glue to apply the glitter onto his particular heart, we did with another “spotty” version.

4. We used the flat end of a skewer to create indented dots and then filled these with black paint using the pointy end of the stick. For most of the hearts we used a skewer to create a hole so we were able to thread baker’s twine at the end of the project so the hearts can be hung.

5. The hearts were left to dry overnight on a baking rack. (2 pic options)

6. Using large rose petals as a tray is a nice way to gift the tags to friends and family.

7. Decorative fun. We plan to use the petals to make a kid-friendly rose perfume.