Fairy House - Trash to Treasure!

Spring is on the way!  The fae will be on the lookout for new garden homes, so now is the time to work on yours.  I was going to show you how to use clay and natural materials on a cardboard house form, but my youngest daughter, Jessica, came up with the idea of using some broken pottery!  Thanks, J!

You can craft this house from an old (or new) broken pot or ceramic vase.
For this project you will need:

a broken pot
Creative Paperclay® modeling material
glue water & sculpting tools
natural materials
Paverpol textile hardener
acrylic paints, paintbrushes, and a brush for applying Paverpol (large and med. soft bristles for getting the hardener into all the nooks and crannies of the piece - It will get sticky while you are using it, but can be cleaned with soap and water if the medium is not allowed to dry in the brush)
plastic wrap
plastic grocery bags or similar for creating form.  You can use paper and cover it with plastic wrap also
optional but suggested - UV varnish - I'm using Josefine "very matte" also from the Paverpol company
sculpting tools - a craft stick and old paintbrush will work just fine

Gather up the pieces of your pottery and start re-assembling it, leaving openings for doors and windows as you see fit.  Glue the pieces together and tape in place until the glue is dry.  Try not to get glue on the front of the pot, as this might affect the paint layers later on.

When you've assembled the pot to your liking, play around with the natural materials you've gathered and see what you'd like to add.  I will be adding some lovely sticks and stones with clay, then adding some additional decorations by gluing them on with Paverpol.

Wet the edges of the pottery and apply the clay, then embed natural materials as desired.  Use a stiff paint brush or sculpting tool to get the clay in the cracks and crevices.

To add a door, place a piece of tracing paper over the pot and trace the edges of the opening.  Cut a piece of cardboard to roughly this size, trim and fit as necessary, then place it in the pot with additional clay.  You may need to do this a little bit at a time, depending on how large the door opening is.  If necessary, allow the clay supports to dry before covering the rest of the cardboard with clay.

as you can see, I've broken off one of the branches in front of the door.  I may glue it back on later, it depends on how I think the house looks at that stage.

Sculpt the door as you see fit.  I always like to add stairs to my fairy houses so that I can nestle them into the dirt a bit without dirt getting in the front door!

Now I've done some sculpting on the other side of the pot, and it looks like a complete mess.  No worries, I can clean the clay off.  I'll be adding more natural materials and details to this window when I apply the Paverpol.

Create the windows by painting a layer of Paverpol all around the inside of the pot and applying a piece of plastic wrap to cover the window completely.  Then paint Paverpol over the wrap.  It will get bubbles, etc.  I like the look of this frosted type window, because it doesn't allow the sun to shine all the way through the piece, and creates a nice effect if I put a tea light in the house later.  You will need to apply several layers on the inside and outside to create a hardened "glass" window.  Allow each coat of Paverpol to dry before applying the next.

When you've finished sculpting and have at least a layer of Paverpol on the windows, create a cap for the pot by bunching and taping plastic bags to the shape you desire.  Remember that the clay over top of this will sit lower when the piece is finished, so keep that in mind when shaping your form.  Cover the top with one single piece of plastic so you can remove the clay top from the form later.

(I really wanted to use that dried artichoke over the door, but now I can see that there won't be enough room if I make the top like I planned - oh well, I'll save it for another project!)

Roll or press out clay to about an 1/8"and apply to the roof form.  If desired, press natural materials into the wet clay.  I've used dried leaves, which I soaked in water until they became pliable, then put on the clay while they were wet so they would take the shape of the clay.  I also sculpted the clay around the dried pumpkin stem so that it would look like the stem was part of the roof.

I ended up adding another layer of plastic bags to support the edge of the roof since
I wanted it to stick out further and have a slight tilt upward to the edges

Allow all of the clay to dry, then paint as desired.

Here is my painted piece drying in the sun.

When everything is dry, coat the entire piece with Paverpol.  This medium is sticky, so you can also add more branches, tendrils, etc. by coating them and holding in place for a few seconds.  Paint the bottom of the roof section and, when that is dry, glue it to the pot with Paverpol also.  You will need to brush the medium on gently around the fragile leaves, etc., and it will appear lumpy, but have patience, it does a pretty good job of "self leveling" and not showing all the brush marks.  When all of the Paverpol is dry, apply a UV varnish for further protection, if desired.  When the varnish is dry, the house is ready to be placed in the garden!  Look for the fairy footprints, and you'll know where to place their new home.

I haven't quite decided yet, there are footprints all over the place here.  Here are some pics of the finished house.

I love the way the leaves turned out on this roof!  I plan on using this technique again!

The back window

Possible placement?  It looks pretty cozy here.

Thanks for joining me here again!

I'd love for you to join me for more projects & art adventures on my personal blog

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Garden Gear - Upcycle project

Tori West here, letting you know that Spring has sprung on Meadow Lane and it's time to get outside and get to work.  Wishing I had a convenient place by the back door to store my hat, gloves, work shirt and maybe the odd garden tool or two, I decided to upcycle an old over-the-door clothes hanger into a piece of wall art & gear hanger.

Supplies:

metal over door clothes hanger

Pliers

foam-core or cardboard

Creative Paperclay® modeling material

Delight™ air dry modeling compound

acrylic paints, paintbrushes

ColourArte Twinkling H2O's watercolors

Sandits sanding sticks

collection of flower molds and cookie cutters (I created all of my own, the smaller flowers were from molds of various jewelry pieces, and the large flowers were cookie cutters made from my patterns - see how to make your own cookie cutters from cardboard on my January post)

gesso

acrylic varnish

coffee filters, newspaper, or other paper maché material

white glue

This is what I started with, 
a simple metal door hanger
that hadn't been in use

Using pliers, I straightened out the bars that allowed the piece to hang on the door, then laid the flattened piece on a large piece of paper and traced around it to use as the basis for my design.







As you can see, the bars aren't perfectly flat. That's okay, they will still work for this project.  I also enlarged the screw holes slightly to allow standard nail-in picture hangers to fit through them.  When I was done modifying the metal, I applied several layers of gesso and a coat of varnish to cover any exposed metal in the chipped paint areas, to prevent the metal from rusting.



Once I had the design sketched out, I cut a piece of foam core to fit the outline, then glued it to the metal piece.  To further secure it and create a smooth transition from the metal to the foamcore, I covered all of the connecting edges with a layer of my favorite paper maché material; coffee filters and white glue.

When the paper maché layer was dry, I applied a thin layer of Creative Paperclay®, and then added cut-out clay forms over that.  I made extra leaf shapes to add in with the flowers later, and set this all aside to dry while I created some flowers!

The flowers were made by mixing various colors of acrylic paint with Delight™ air dry modeling compound, then pressing the clay into molds or rolling the clay out, stamping it with a cookie-cutter, then cutting out the clay shapes and assembling the pieces (a technique very similar to the one demonstrated by Linda Hess).

I laid them on the design sketch while I was working, and also made some extra flowers for filling in areas, or to use should I decide to change the design a bit.

...BTW, there are lots of great flower making techniques on this blog, just type "flower" in the search box at the right under the blog heading!

When my base piece was dry I used Sandits to shape and smooth the leaves and vines.  They work well for getting in to smaller areas, but what I like most about them is that they seem to have just the right amount of flexibility and length in the shafts to make smoothing around curved areas easy.

When everything was sanded, I applied a base application of paint in various colors of green as a background to the flowers.








All that was left to do was glue the flowers and leaves in place, paint the saying in the center, and add some sparkle!  Although you can't see it very well in the photo, I used Twinkling H2O's on the center lettering, and on all of the flowers except the small purple ones.  I wanted the effect to be subtle, which it is, the glimmering just catches my eye as I'm heading out to the garden!

I hope Spring is blissful wherever you are! Thanks for joining me here!

I'd love for you to join me for more projects & art adventures on my personal blog

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