Saturday, February 13, 2016

Teeny Tiny Roses... and a Mold.

I've been thinking about making teensy roses for ages now. I day dream about them while I'm working away on other things. I doodle them in the margins of order lists at my day job. I make swirly rose shapes in the soap bubbles in my dishwater... 
I'm pretty excited to finally have made these.

Here's how they came to be... What they'll be used for will come later.


They really are tiny! Most are about a half centimeter.


I'm using my favorite clay.... STAEDTLER Fimo!
I had a white, a pink and a green.
I made five gradients of pink by mixing less and less colour into the white clay.
I also paled out the light green by mixing that with white clay too.


I rolled each clay shade out into roughly 2 mm thick worms.


I cut off a bit of the darkest pink and rolled it into a ball.
I flattened the ball onto a sub-straight, I'm using a dowel here because I want the finished roses to have a curved base,
I used a pointed tool to push a hole into the center of the flattened disc of clay forming a donut shape.


Continue to make tiny balls of clay keeping the colours gradient as you work,
Push a hole in each flattened disc. Each new colour ball should fit inside the previous.


I made tiny little leaves from teardrop shaped green clay. I flattened the center vein of each leaf using a pointed tool.


I like the rose with the lightest colour on the outside a bit more than I like the dark on the outside. I'll use both though to give a bit of variety.


Here's my bit of dowel filled with tiny blooms. I really do like them and can't wait until I can use them in a design.


I've made a mold of the flowers so I can reproduce them easily and quickly. This'll be fun to play with later too!