Decorating Crafts...

Directions

1. Make first any fragments you’ll want to glue onto the finished pot. To make ornaments, roll out Sculpey with rolling pin about ¼”-½” thick and make an impression in it with any object or raised design (our angel came from a lamp; you can get pillars from cake-decorating shop). Bake Sculpey until it’s hard. Roll out more Sculpey and press it into your “mold”. Pull gently out of mold and lay on a flat surface. Cut excess Sculpey away with X-Acto knife if you wish.

2. Fragments then need to be baked in order to become hard. Put pot on its side on a cookie sheet and jam crumpled foil under on each side so pot won’t roll. Lay Sculpey fragment where you want it on the unpainted pot and shape it to fit the contours of the pot. Bake Sculpey right on the pot in the oven so it retains its curved shape.

   

3. To make the baby footprints, I molded a doll foot, but dolls have little triangular feet that don’t look human, so I stretched the Sculpey and narrowed the foot in the middle to make it more realistic. Once you’ve made a mold, pressed Sculpey into it and pulled your ornament out, Spray the pot (outdoors with recommended breathing protection!) with Kilz. Let dry. Spray the pot’s interior and any of the outside (the rim) that will not get the paint/sand treatment.

4. Lay out a big piece of newspaper on a table. Dump about six cups of sand on and spread it into a large flat layer. Mix in a paper cup the entire 2 oz. of acrylic paint plus some white glue, using about a 2:1 ratio paint to glue.

5. Use sponge brush to cover the pot with paint thickly and as evenly as possible. Roll the pot gently across the sand, checking and re-rolling to make sure all wet parts touch the sand. Resist the temptation to touch up the paint and re-roll – this produces unattractive globs. We did the striped pot by marking sections, taping along the border of the yellow, painting the yellow, then removing tape before rolling. We let yellow dry then carefully hand-painted the orange sections (using a smaller brush to swirl in the magenta) and rolled them one at a time.

6. When dry, glue fragments on with caulk adhesive.

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