Art Lesson: Sculpting a Tree and House on Cinnamon Ornaments.

Hello, friends!

I am sorry I have been away so much lately.

I am feeling nearly back to normal, just finishing up a few more paintings for one more craft sale I have to drop off items for this Saturday.

Then I will be done and on to Christmas gifts.

Do you make some Christmas gifts?  They are my favorite to receive,

so I try to create some as well.

As I mentioned a couple of weeks back, I made some cinnamon ornaments to sell.

I thought I would share how simple it is to create scenes on them.

Here are pictures of the process: they are much better at explaining than I could with words.

(There are sculpting tools available and I think I even had some at one time,

but this pen cap worked well, so I used it.)

(Splitting the branches you have added works well at creating smaller branches as it gets tedious to try to roll twigs this small).

(Once the tree, branches, and ground is placed where you want,

blending the edges into the background piece is important.  This will prevent them from breaking off easily once the dough is dried).

(Don't for get to use a straw to cut out a place for the wire to hang them).

These are so fun to make.

They do shrink up a bit when they are dried.  It is helpful to speed up the drying process in a dehydrator set on low or in the oven on the lowest setting for a couple hours till they feel/look dry.

Here is the recipe I used:

Between 3/4 and 1 cup applesauce (not chunky)

1 cup of cinnamon

2 Tbs. white glue

If the dough feels too dry, add more applesauce; if it feels too wet, add more cinnamon (I put the fluctuating amount in the recipe by the applesauce because I found it easier to adjust that than the cinnamon: I had a limited amount of cinnamon to use).  Use cinnamon to dust the working surface and rolling pin.  I read that the more you knead it, the easier it is to work with/the smoother the clay will be.  Also, these will last indefinitely (I assume as long as they are not allowed to get wet or too damp.  While looking over the various recipes on the internet, I have read comments from people who have had them for nearly 20 years).

Thanks for stopping by!

(I will be sharing how to sculpt the snowman in the upper left next week,
so get some cinnamon dough mixed up and come on back!)




Sharing with these great blogs:
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Astrollthrulife.net: Inspire-me-Tuesday