We'll be right back.
Judy, thank you.
["Pomp and Circumstance"]
Hello, my name is Sue Heaser.
I have worked in polymer clay and miniatures for over 15 years.
I have written and illustrated three books on polymer clay,
including Making Doll's House Miniatures with Polymer Clay.
I have also written over 40 articles on polymer clay and miniatures
for British and American magazines.
In this video, I'm going to show you how to make miniatures
for your Doll's House kitchen.
The kitchen is my most favourite room, in miniature as well as large size,
and with polymer clay, there are so many wonderful things you can make to fill it.
First, we will make miniature china and crockery,
teapot, plates, cups and saucers, and bowls.
Then we will make vases and jugs,
and I will show all the various ways that you can paint them.
Next, we will cover making baskets in polymer clay
and all the different ways that you can do this.
Essential items in the kitchen, wooden spoons, knives and rolling pins,
and I will show you how to make simulated pine.
Miniature brushes are great fun to make and they really work.
We will use real bristles set in polymer clay handles
that are made to look like wood.
Pots and pans in all their variety in simulated copper or cast iron
with different kinds of handles and some of them with lids.
Finally, we will make some pretty tiles to put on your Doll's House kitchen wall.
These are the general tools and materials that you will need
for creating the projects in this video.
Firstly, of course, you will need polymer clay.
There are many different brands.
I find Fimo and Primo are particularly good as they are firm,
which is very good for miniatures.
But do try the other clays if you like working with them and experiment.
You must knead each piece of clay thoroughly before use
so that it is soft and malleable.
This is often called conditioning.
Probably the most important tool that you use is an X-Acto knife.
This curved blade is the most useful shape for miniatures.
You will also need a heavy duty knife for harder cutting
and a fine blade like this.
Scissors are always useful.
Graph paper is used in projects when you will need to cut very accurately
to be sure things are square and true.
It is important to use a ceramic tile for baking many miniature projects
as you can create on the tile and then put it straight in the oven
without moving anything.
A ceramic tile is used for making delicate miniatures on
as it can then be placed directly in the oven without moving the clay pieces.
You can also use a baking sheet covered with a piece of ordinary paper
for other bakings.
Foil is used in several of the projects in a variety of ways.
Marbles in different sizes are used to make miniature bowls.
A timer is a good idea to keep you from forgetting
that your clay is baking in the oven.
Metallic powders are used for many different purposes
to simulate miniature metal.
You can use a variety of types.
Many different kinds are available from art stores.
But try to choose the finer grades.
You will need to roll out your clay for some of the projects.
For large rollings, a big roller like this made of acrylic is ideal,
or you could just use a sturdy glass or jar instead.
Cardboard strips can be laid on either side of the clay while you roll out
to keep your clay to an even thickness.
This tiny rolling pin is very useful,
and I got it from a cake decorating store.
Keep a ruler handy so you can measure the size of your balls and logs.
A metal ruler is particularly useful because you can lay it on the clay
and cut against it with your exacto when you want to cut out strips of clay.
It is also good for marking the clay.
These little tools are homemade out of polymer clay
and are used for shaping crockery.
To make these little tools, roll out a log of clay
to the diameter that you need.
Round one end and then bake.
And while still warm, cut sharply with your knife
to get an even round end.
You will need a variety of blunt tapestry needles
and darning needles for various projects.
Knitting needles and barbecue skewers are also used many times over.
Use a good quality acrylic paint for painting on polymer clay.
Do not use oil paint which will never dry properly.
You will need some good quality artist's paint brushes
for painting miniature china.
A triple zero is the best size for delicate paintings.
Don't use a sable brush which will be ruined by the acrylic paint.
Man-made fibres are best.
A larger brush is useful for varnishing
and also for brushing on the artist's pastel that you will use.
When making miniatures with polymer clay,
it is extremely important to keep your hands
and your work surface as clean as possible.
The tiniest bit of stray dirt into the clay
will show enormously in such small sized things.
Baby wipes are extremely useful for keeping your hands
and your work surface clean,
but you can also use alcohol and a tissue.
Besides a cleaning agent,
alcohol such as isopropyl or methylated spirits
can be used to wash your brushes for some of the varnishes,
and it is a good degreaser before painting on polymer clay.
You will need two different types of glue for the projects in this video,
tacky glue and super glue or cyanoacrylate glue.
Talcum powder or cornstarch is used for preventing the clay
from sticking to itself or to your fingers.
You will also need varnishes for clay,
depending on what you are doing.
An acrylic artist varnish like this is excellent,
or you could use any of the varnishes
produced by the clay manufacturers.
Artist pastels are excellent for brushing onto polymer clay
to give subtle effects.
You will need artist's soft pastel and not oil pastel.
These are available from art shops.
Rub the pastel onto paper first,
and then you can brush up the powder.
Sandpaper is used for final touch-up
and correction of imperfections on the baked clay.
Choose a fine grade such as 400 or 600.
Music
I'm going to show you how to make a series of miniature crockery,
little cups and saucers and teapots.
These are great fun to make in polymer clay
because the clay is so fine.
It works really well.
You can get very, very thin walls to all your cups and saucers.
Now, all the pottery and crockery I'm going to do
is at one twelfth scale,
which is the most popular Doll's House scale,
although many people work in smaller scales.
If you work in a smaller scale,
you can easily adapt these techniques.
There is absolutely no problem at all.
It's great fun to do.
Now, first you take some white clay.
Please use a firm clay.
It's much, much easier to make these little vessels
if you have a fairly firm clay.
If you're using Fimo,
the white clay can be rather sticky,
so it's best to mix it with a little bit of transparent clay,
and then you get an ideal texture.
Primo works just fine out of the package.
So first you take your clay out of the pack,
and you need to knead it, condition it,
until it's worked up and nice and soft.
Don't go on too long,
or else you'll find that the clay will get too sticky,
and then it'll get harder to make the little pots.
There, my clay's nicely conditioned,
and I'm going to pinch off approximately enough
to make a five-eighths of an inch ball.
I keep a ruler handy so that I can be sure
to keep to a precise scale.
Five-eighths of an inch.
Now, when I need to roll a ball of clay, a large ball,
I place the piece of clay in my hand,
and then I rotate my upper hand over it
with quite hard pressure to start with,
slowly getting lighter and lighter and lighter,
and then have a look at it.
Has it got any fold marks?
Yes, there it has a little bit.
So I will now just roll hard again and lighten up,
and there we have a perfect ball.
Working in white clay,
you have to keep your hands very, very clean,
and it's a good idea to use baby wipes
to wipe your hands with and wipe the surface
so that you're absolutely certain
you're not picking up any little bits of dust or fluff.
So there's my body of my teapot.
Now, the next thing I need is a little thin log of clay
so that I can make a foot ring.
It's elegant, and here's a little teapot
that has got an attractive foot ring on it.
Now, to roll a log of clay,
most of us have learned these skills at school,
but it's not that hard to do.
But to get a really even log,
you roll it on the board like that,
and look how I'm keeping my fingers moving all the time,
moving them across the clay as I roll.
If I roll with my fingers in one place for too long,
I'll get a dent,
and that's what I'm trying to avoid doing.
It needs to be about one-sixteenth of an inch thick,
and there we are.
Now, I take my X-Acto, I trim off the end,
and I cut a length about three-quarters of an inch,
like that.
Now, the easiest way to make a little ring
is work on a surface that is smooth enough
so that the clay will tack to it.
So I'm going to press one end down just enough
for it to hold on,
and then with my tool, I will curve it round,
coax it round using fingers and tool
until I've got it almost round in a circle,
and then I can push at it to close up that little gap.
You don't need to worry about it being absolutely perfect,
because this is going to go underneath the teapot.
There. Nice little foot ring.
Take my ball of clay, and I press it on top,
and very much with the flat of my fingers,
I push it down like that.
There we have an attractive little foot ring.
The next thing to do is to make the teapot lid.
Now, at this scale, it would be very difficult
to make a lid that was actually openable,
so I'm going to cheat and make one
that's just a simulated lid.
Now, you can use a drinking straw for this,
or a very useful tool for lots of miniature things
is a brush protector.
You can find these in art stores,
and they are sold to place over the end of a paintbrush
to protect it when you carry it home,
and they're usually free.
Now, with a brush protector,
I position it absolutely vertically
over the top of the teapot, centering it as much as I can,
and then a light press down,
because I want it to look like a little teapot lid
that's sitting on top of the teapot.
And there we are.
I'll finish that off afterwards
with a little ball of clay for the teapot lid handle.
Now, it's fun to make the spout.
I shall pinch off enough clay
to make a quarter of an inch ball.
Rolling smaller balls, I need less hand area,
so I tend to start them as for a big ball,
and then for the final detail,
I roll them on the pad of my thumb
to get a nice, round little ball.
Make sure it's fairly smooth.
I now place it on my work surface,
and I roll it on one side of the ball
to make a little teardrop shape,
just like that.
I'm going to cut a little wedge
out of the fine, narrow end, like that,
and then I cut the other end at an angle
so that it will fit neatly onto the teapot base.
Now, I take the teapot,
and I need to press the bottom of the spout
neatly onto it.
Check it from all angles
to be absolutely certain that it's straight,
and you don't need to push it on very hard
because it will fuse together
when you bake the teapot.
There we are.
A dear little spout already.
Now, set it aside,
and we'll make the handle.
For this, I need to take a piece of clay
and roll it into a slightly thicker log
than I did for the foot ring.
This needs to be a little bit more than a sixteenth, really,
to give a substantial handle
because I have a reasonably chunky teapot.
It's a good idea to look
at lots of different types of crockery,
and then you'll get lots of new ideas
for your miniature pottery and so on.
Now, I need to cut a length of that,
and I find it's a good idea to cut generously.
You can always trim off something that's too long.
Take the teapot
and lay the handle exactly opposite the spout,
going upwards.
This is often a surprise.
It's just a handle to start going up,
but this is a very easy way to do it.
I use my knife to give a little press, like that,
and then I gently curve, coaxing it
because the clay just might crack otherwise,
round and down,
keeping it nicely lined up with that spout
because you really don't want it
to be at the different angles of the spout.
It would look very peculiar.
Another little press,
with either your knife or a needle tool, like that,
and there we have the handle.
Now, a tiny ball,
1 32nd of an inch,
and I press that on top
to finish off the teapot.
And there we have
a dear little character-filled,
rounded teapot.
Now, you need to bake this teapot
for between 10 and 15 minutes
at the usual temperatures.
This is quite a short time,
but these pieces are so tiny,
they will harden very quickly.
After we have made all the rest of the crockery,
I will show you how to paint miniature crockery
to get a really fine result.
MUSIC
Now we're going to make miniature teacups,
saucers and bowls.
These are some of my favourite things to make in miniature.
First, you need to roll out a log of clay
about a quarter of an inch in diameter,
and then I like to use one of these
fine double-edged razor blades like this.
I cover one edge with a log of clay
to make it safe.
I like using these because they are so very, very thin,
and they'll cut through a log
without distorting it at all.
With my blade, I cut off a few equal lengths,
equal to the number of cups that I want to make.
This is a very good way of being sure
that all your little cups are exactly the same size.
Now, it's a good idea to make some extra ones
because this technique, while it's great fun,
you will need to practise a bit to start with.
If you make a mistake when you're rolling a little cup,
you can always squash it up and use that clay again,
because polymer clay, of course, is infinitely reusable
until you bake it.
Now, I take one of these little logs
and I give it a tiny roll on the surface
to be sure that my blade hasn't squashed it at all.
I then use a needle.
I love using these needles.
They're just right for what I call miniature potting.
I stand my little log up on end,
and then, with my big, thick tapestry needle,
I press down into the middle,
taking care not to go too far down, like that.
With your hand over the edge of your board
so you can keep your little log absolutely straight,
you press down and you roll back and forth on the board,
like that.
Be very careful not to push towards it too much with the needle,
or the needle will go right through the bottom.
Of course, you don't want that to happen.
After you've rolled it a little, stand it up,
and there, it's started to open it out into a little cup.
I find that really exciting.
I love making these little pots.
Now, to make sure that it's really even,
turn it upside down and press down,
and that will flatten the rim
and make sure that any wobbles are nicely smoothed out.
Insert your needle again, and we just repeat.
You can always take it in one direction, like that,
or you can just roll back and forth.
Now, after I've got the walls reasonably thin,
I then need a larger tool in order to open it out further,
and so I will do it again, like that,
pressing down, opening it out some more.
Turn it over, push it down again,
and then I now need the end of a paintbrush,
nice and rounded.
I shall dip that into talcum powder to get a nice dusting,
and that will help it to slip inside.
Push it on to the end.
A brush end needs talcum powder rather than the needles
because it's more likely to stick to this.
So I press it on, and I continue.
Open it out a little bit more. It's not slipping.
You don't want to get talcum powder onto your board,
or else you won't have the friction there
to make it turn like a little wheel.
And there it is, rotating into a dear little cup.
You can use this technique to make all sorts of different pots,
and I'll show you some later on.
A teacup looks more attractive when it's slightly flared out
like this one I've done here.
So here I have made a little tool out of polymer clay.
It's simply a rounded log with a nice rounded end to it.
Now I'll dip that into some talcum powder
because otherwise it will stick to the clay,
and I will push my newly made little cup onto it
and twist it to flare it out, pressing it on as we go.
Look how thin the walls of the cup are.
Now the next step is to put a handle onto this cup.
Now I've already shown you how to put a handle on a teapot.
This is exactly the same process,
only of course you need a much thinner log of clay like that.
Let's roll it a little, and then with my knife
I will cut a length that's slightly longer
than the actual height of the cup, like so.
To put the handle on a teacup,
you haven't got the solidity that you had with the teapot,
so the best thing to do is to support it on the little tool,
place it facing up, just like for the teapot,
a little press down with a needle tool, like so,
and then coax it round and down,
and then press it back on, just like you did for the teapot.
There we are, the finished cup.
Now I'm going to show you how to make little saucers
to go with the little teacups.
First of all, you need a ball of clay.
I'm going to use one about a quarter of an inch, rolling it out.
I place the ball on my work surface,
and then with the flat pad of my finger I press it down,
and keep pressing all round,
and I'm trying to keep it as round as I can,
domed in the middle, but thinner towards the edge,
because I'm trying to simulate that this is very fine china.
Now, taking my X-Acto, I slice under it.
That's why I like this sort of blade.
It's got a flexibility to it, and I can press down hard,
and then scoop the whole thing off in one movement.
Turn it over.
Now, I'll get some talcum powder,
and I'll dust the board, and lay it down,
and dust the top like that.
Then, using the tool I showed you earlier,
position it carefully so that it is right in the middle of the saucer,
and I press down gently,
and as I press, the sides of the saucer will come up just slightly.
It will come into a perfect little shape.
You see how I rock slightly?
Now, I need to take it off,
and there is my little saucer.
Any talcum powder that's visible is not a problem.
You can sand it off very easily after baking.
In fact, with white clay, I find it's never noticeable,
and I use white clay a lot for making my crockery,
because it makes such an attractive result.
With this technique, you can go on to make lots of little plates as well,
and all you need to do is to use a larger ball of clay to start with
and make yourself a log tool like this one,
but of a slightly larger diameter.
Here is one I have made using a larger ball of clay,
and I can now either go on to impress the centre with a larger tool,
or from this point, I can turn it into a bowl,
and that is what we're going to do now.
I have a nice collection of marbles from toy shops,
and this is quite a large marble.
It must be nearly an inch across,
and this is ideal for turning out miniature bowls.
I take this partially made plate without the centre impression,
and I steady the marble with a piece of clay underneath it, like that.
It doesn't matter if the clay is soft.
This is now hard because I've used this marble quite a few times to make bowls,
and it just stays on there.
Very convenient.
Position the marble like that,
and I place my partially formed dome of clay over it,
and I just work it down with my fingers all around.
You just have to coax it a little bit, and down it goes,
and it will cling to the glass of the marble,
which is extremely convenient, like so.
I press it all around like that.
Now, at this point, I have various choices.
I can either press it hard down, inverting it, onto my work surface,
and if I press hard, I will give the bowl a flat bottom.
That's a very simple bowl,
or I can get a foot ring, like for the teapot,
and press that neatly into the middle,
and then I can press it down.
The third way that I'm going to show you is I get a small ball of clay.
This is about a quarter of an inch diameter.
Roll it out, press it down to make a little disc,
cut it off with my X-Acto, and position that.
Push it on, so it tacks on neatly,
and I'll turn it over, and press down hard, like that.
You need to look sideways as you press it down
to be certain that you're getting it nice and even.
Using my X-Acto, so I don't tear it off, slice under,
and there I have the little foot ring on the bottom of the bowl.
A neat finish.
I can now put a rim round the bowl, and that's easy.
All you need to do is to get the side of your needle,
and rotating the marble, you press in all the way round like that,
and that just makes a nice little finish to it.
Other ideas are using a paper clip to decorate around the side
with impressions, or even a little stamp of some sort.
Now, the secret here is not to take it off the marble.
Bake it on the marble, and like the teapot,
it really only needs about 10 or 15 minutes.
Here's another bowl I've made,
and I've already taken this one off the marble,
and you can see that inside you get a nice smooth result
from the smooth glass of the marble.
All nice and regular because I didn't take it off
and distort it before I baked it.
It should come off the marble fairly easily,
but it's easiest if you do it when the marble is still slightly warm.
Not ouchy hot, but just slightly warm.
Now, to finish off the rim and any little irregularities,
I get some of my 600-grade sandpaper,
and I simply hold it on the sandpaper,
and then I rotate it like that so that I get a nice smooth rim.
And there you are, a delightful bowl all ready to be painted.
For this project, I'm going to show you how to make a vase,
which can then be developed into a whole series of different styles of jug.
You start with a ball of clay like this.
I'm using a reasonable size one, it's about half an inch,
so it will make a fairly big vase.
I take the ball and I roll it in my hand on one side
in order to make it into a teardrop.
As I press, it is slowly forming into that point.
Hands are lovely tools, they're soft, they don't mark the clay,
so it's good to use your hands as much as you can.
Another good way of fining off this point
is to hold it between your forefingers, just like that,
and then rolling between them.
And there I've got a nice, neat shape.
Now, with my knife, I'm going to cut off that distorted end
and pinch it round so it's nice and even.
Press it down onto your working surface, like that,
and then with the tapestry needle, press in the top
and squeeze all round so that it's, again,
any distortion from pushing your tapestry needle in is made good.
Now, this is what I call stirring the soup.
You wind the needle, keeping it in the same place,
and that will flare out the top of the little vase, like so.
I'm supporting it slightly with the thumb and forefinger of my left hand.
And there, I've opened up the top of the vase.
Now I can take a paintbrush handle, as before,
and I dip it into some talcum powder to stop it from sticking,
and I'm going to repeat the process with that,
flaring it out again a bit further so I get a bigger hole.
Finally, I get my little tool that I use so much
that I've made myself out of the clay, more talcum powder,
and with this, I can work round the top.
This is the same tool that I used for the saucer,
only I'm using the other end.
One end, for impressions, because it's been cut off,
the other end is rounded, so I can use it as this rounding tool
for forming the little cups and the tops of vases and so on.
Now, looking into the vase, it's very unconvincing,
but the shape is good, and that's the best way round to do it
so that you've got the solidity of the clay
to stop it getting too floppy inside.
I'm just going to improve that slightly with my fingers,
pinching it out a bit to flare out the vase.
Finally, if I want to use this for miniature flowers,
I'm going to need a little bit more depth in that,
so this is the point that I go down further into the clay
and rotate again, and that will give the illusion of depth,
and that gives you just enough room to be able to push
the stems of miniature flowers into the bottom.
Now, if I then want to proceed to make it into a jug,
this is an old pottery technique,
it's exactly the same as potters use for full-sized jugs,
and you can manage it in miniature very well.
I support the two sides like that,
and then with my tool, my needle,
I pinch with my left hand and I pull,
and there I have a lovely lip to my jug.
Now, all it needs is a handle,
and you can make a handle just like the one we did for the teapot
and the cups, but I'm going to make a slightly different one.
Again, using pottery technique, I roll out my log,
and then with my little roller, I roll it smooth
so that it's a strip rather than a log.
Once I have flattened the little log slightly into the strip,
I then take my knife, and this is to make a ridged handle.
Mark down the centre of the handle like that, all the way down.
This simulates the extruded handles that potters use.
Now, to cut the length, as I want to put a curl at the bottom end,
I'll cut it a little bit longer.
So take the height plus about 3 eighths of an inch,
cut it off the board, and in exactly the same way as for the teapot,
and apply it with the ridge uppermost, or down in this case,
ends up uppermost, pressing it on, curl it round and down,
press it on again, matching it neatly,
a little press with the needle to attach it,
and then roll it into a tiny little curl, and there.
Isn't that a pretty handle?
And now I'll bake it for 10 to 15 minutes,
as with all the other miniature china,
and then we're ready to start painting.
Now I'm going to show you how to paint your miniature china and crockery.
Once you've baked it, all is ready,
but there are a few rules that you will need to follow
to be sure that all the crockery is really permanent
and the paint doesn't deteriorate in any way.
Firstly, the sort of paint you need to use is this acrylic paint.
Avoid using anything like enamel, hobby enamels, or oil paints.
They may well not dry on polymer clay, and that is so disappointing.
Anything water-based, hobby paints that are acrylics and water-based, are also fine.
You will also need some varnishes.
One problem that can occur with paint on polymer clay
is that it can bleed into the surrounding surface.
To avoid this problem, it's wise to varnish your clay,
your baked clay, before you start painting.
For this, you will want to use a type of varnish that is compatible with the clay,
such as these, which have been developed specifically for polymer clay,
or else an acrylic varnish.
On no account use a spray varnish,
they may well react with the clay, even the acrylic ones
may have a propellant that will react.
Finally, you may want to varnish over the top of the paint to protect it.
Another important thing to use is some form of alcohol,
like ozopropyl, or denatured alcohol, or methylated spirits.
This is useful for washing your brushes
when you are using these spirit-based varnishes.
You will also need to degrease the surface of the varnished clay
so that the paint sticks to it well.
Now I'm going to varnish this little cup with gloss varnish,
because the result I want is to be gloss.
It's very fiddly trying to varnish and paint these little tiny things.
Your fingers seem enormous.
So I find the best way is to hold it, like that,
between my thumb and forefinger, paint over, like so.
It's best to keep this fairly thin.
Keep the handle unpainted, flip it round, and paint the other side.
Smooth strokes, sparing varnish, turn it back,
and then I can use the handle to set it down and allow it to dry.
I can varnish the handle when I give it the final coat to protect the paint.
Now I'm going to show you the painting process.
I shall use this simple little pattern here that's on these little saucers.
As you can see, it's tiny little spots of paint to make up the petals of the flowers.
I use a nice, fine brush, and I'm going to show you on a teapot.
Here's the teapot.
It has been varnished with gloss varnish,
and now I need to degrease the surface.
Despite the fact that I have only just varnished it,
grease from the atmosphere seems to arrive almost immediately.
So with a paintbrush and with some isopropyl or methylated spirits on my brush,
I just gently brush all over it.
Now here I have some tiny amounts of paint.
I've got some dark blue and some white.
Take a bit of white.
Quantities of paint, of course, are very, very small.
With acrylic paint, the problem is more that it dries rather quickly.
I'm now going to do tiny spots of paint to make the flowers.
One there, and one here, and a third here.
If I make a mistake, it's very simple to just scrape away the paint with my knife,
and then I can go in and paint again.
Remember not to leave any paint on your brush for more than a few minutes at a time,
because this paint will ruin brushes.
Once it has dried, it's very hard to remove it.
Now before the blue dries on my tile,
I shall paint the detail round the surface of the little lid to accentuate it.
Now this is quite tricky, but remember that you can rotate the teapot as you paint.
It needs to be a bit thicker.
If it's too watery, it won't stick very well.
This accentuates the lid, and I've got a nice round impression that I know is round.
And then I'm going to paint the top like that.
And then other nice little tricks are to perhaps put a little dab of paint
round there to accentuate the spout.
It just gives more emphasis to the design,
and I like to paint a little dab over the top like that of the handle.
Not all the way down, just on top.
If you look at China everywhere, you'll get so many ideas of how to paint pottery.
If you're going to paint the handle in any way,
of course you'll need to varnish it before painting.
Now I'll flip it over, hold it by the handle,
and I'll paint again the design on the other side.
Now I'm going to make tiny spots of orange paint into the center of the flowers.
And there we have the finished result.
To finish off your miniature pottery,
you now need to paint a coating of varnish all over it.
Again, this protects the paint and is the final step.
It's a good idea to leave it overnight just to be sure it's completely dry.
Otherwise that gloss varnish just could lift your delicate little paintworks.
Now I'm going to show you how to make pots or saucepans,
as they're called in the UK.
Little miniature pots are enormous fun.
They look so lovely in the kitchen sitting on your tiny stove.
And they're not hard to make in polymer clay.
Polymer clay is so good to simulate all these different materials.
And here we have some copper pots because I've dusted them with copper powder.
And some I've left black so that they look like old cast iron.
And the best thing about it is if they're a bit dented or bent,
it really doesn't matter because that just makes them look used and more realistic.
So to start with, you need to make a former, very similar to the one we made for the pottery,
for the cups and saucers.
But this one needs to be wider and I've made it about three quarters of an inch wide.
Just a simple log of clay that I have formed, baked,
and then while it was still warm, so cutting is easier,
you cut off one end of it to get a nice firm end.
So I'm going to put it into the foil like this and draw the foil up smoothly around it and twist it.
And there it's going to give me a handle in order to hold it with.
Then you need to get the foil even smoother around the outside.
Now I need to rub the outside of the foil hard with a tool like this.
This little rolling pin does very well so that the pot will come off the former easily
after it's been baked and also so that the wrinkles don't spoil anything inside and spoil the shape.
That is about as far as you need to go with the smoothing.
To roll out small sheets of clay, I use two pieces of thick cardboard on either side
and here is my conditioned clay that I place between the strips of cardboard
and then with a rolling pin I go in and roll it all out.
But the cardboard prevents me from rolling the clay too thin
and ensures that it's all an even thickness right across the length of it.
There, now my clay is all smoothly rolled out.
I need to cut out a strip about the height of the sides of the pot.
To do this, I'm going to use my small metal ruler and lay it down
and cut along it with my exacto.
If you have a tissue blade, you can use that.
I need to be sure that it's about even, the same width all the way along.
That looks about right.
The ends don't matter too much because I can trim them afterwards.
Using the scrap clay, I will place the former onto it and cut round.
Now I cut under to free it from the board
and just make sure by patting that it's firmly adhering to the base of the former.
Now I use the strip, get it nicely lined up and nice and smooth.
Cut the first edge really straight.
Lay on my prepared former with the little base there
and I'm going to just roll it up.
If I keep going until it hits the other side,
I should have a mark exactly where it was.
I can butt the joint, hopefully, very neatly.
That's coming nicely.
Then with my knife, I can smooth away as much of the joint as I can.
It doesn't matter too much because these pots were often made with all sorts of joints.
It depends how rustic and dented you want your pot to look.
I then like to check the height of it and see what it looks like.
It looks quite a nice size for a pot,
but I think I'm just going to trim the top edge a little.
That's quite easy.
Just go around, spinning it as you cut, like that,
and take away the scrap clay.
Now, this is where you do a little bit of cheating.
It's a little bit too thick for a realistic miniature pot,
so I'm going to press all the way round like this.
That will make the top of the pot look much thinner
in the illusion that it's cast iron rather than shrunk polymer clay.
Now, with my knife, again, I can just ensure that that is nice and neat.
The usual thing, as with the crockery, after baking,
you can always rub it upside down on a piece of sandpaper to trim the top edge.
There.
Now, the base of the pot is ready, and all we need is a handle.
I'll cut that from this spare piece of clay.
Think about the length of the handle that you need,
and allow a little extra because it's going to bend down, like that.
I cut a strip.
At this point, you can trim the end to make it round.
Lay it onto the pot.
I like to put the handle on the side that had the seam,
and press it down.
Now I'm going to put some little rivets on.
I roll some of the clay into a thin log,
cut off the end and cut a little slice.
I then pat it on as a tiny rivet.
I haven't even had to touch the clay,
so I keep that little rivet neatly cut and very round-looking,
and I shall put two more on, make it a well-riveted handle,
and now I'm ready to bend the handle down.
Put the knife blade against it and bend it down, like so.
Now, for that to bake without sagging,
I'm going to need to support it as I bake it.
So for that, I use a small block of clay.
That looks just about the right size.
Then I'll need to put a little bit of foil smoothly over it.
The clay used to make these little blocks won't be wasted,
even though they've been hardened,
because you can use them again for the same size pot.
Now that's all ready to go in the oven.
But if I want to make a copper pot,
then I need to dust it with metallic copper powder.
I'm doing this with a touch of gold, or copper in this case.
I'm using a nice soft brush, so it doesn't mark the clay.
I need to get all around and cover every side of the pot that's visible.
Now, I can't dust the side of the pot that's inside,
but what I can do is you can always paint it afterwards with copper powder
mixed with a little varnish to keep the same color copper,
or, as in the case of some of these pots here, you leave it black,
as though it's a well-used pot.
I make sure I get all the sides done.
It's all finished.
It doesn't matter if this flops about, it shouldn't fall off.
The important thing is to bake it with its support
so that it's held in the right angle, like that.
Transfer it onto your baking tray and bake it in exactly that way.
When you get it out of the oven,
leave it for a few minutes until it's just cooled slightly
so that you can handle it comfortably,
and then ease it out of the former.
The little handle will help you pull it away,
but you may well need to get your knife blade in just a little to ease it away.
Then, the final stage is you need to give it a good coating of the gloss varnish
in order to stop the copper powder rubbing off.
Now I'm going to make a pot with different handles.
Here's one that I have just made,
and here's a log that I have rolled out,
and I shall cut two lengths of approximately half an inch.
They need to be equal in size
so that you have equal-sized handles on your pot.
Lay it on, like that,
press down,
curve it over,
and keep going, curving that, tucking that under,
like that,
and then press down the other side to finish the handle.
Then you need to repeat on the other side,
exactly the same, taking great care that it is exactly opposite the first one.
Now, to finish off, here is the type of pot.
It needs a little lid.
These are very easy to make,
and they follow very much the same principle of making a plate.
Only this time, you just make sure that it's flat and not domed.
So I form the ball,
and then lay it on my work surface,
press it down, flat of my finger,
and keep pressing until it looks about the same diameter as my pot.
I can hold the pot I've made over the top of it
just to check that it's the right diameter.
That looks a little bit too small.
I don't want it falling into the pot,
so I should press it down a little further to make it a bit bigger.
And again, the principle of thinning the edges
to give the illusion of a thin piece of metal.
Now, all I need to do is press it with some circular former
and a little dusting of talcum powder to prevent it from sticking.
Position it in the middle.
Be sure that it's exactly in the middle and not lopsided,
and then press, and there we are.
Brush away the extra talcum powder,
and now I need to put a handle the same sort in the middle to finish it off.
The next step is to brush it with copper powder,
and here it is, all coppered and shiny, and ready for the Doll's House Stove.
Now I'm going to show you how to make some of the smaller kitchen utensils,
spoons, a rolling pin, and knives.
These are really useful little things to have on your Doll's House tables in the kitchen.
To start with, I'm going to show you how to marble clay to simulate wood grain.
Now, this little spoon has been made with a simulated pine wood grain,
and look how realistic it looks.
To marble a really effective pine, you need ochre clay, white clay,
and you need to have mixed a similar quantity, one part ochre and one part white.
So I have three little logs, all much the same size.
Now I'm going to gather these together, and I'm going to roll them into one log, like this.
This compresses them all together and makes them longer.
I'll now twist it. That helps mix the colors quicker.
Fold it in half, and roll it up again.
Keep doing this until the streaks are quite tiny to simulate a miniature wood grain,
but be careful, if you continue too long, they will all disappear,
and you'll end up with one uniform color.
That's about halfway. I need to go a bit longer than that.
I'm quite happy with that.
Now you need to make your spoons.
Roll out your log of marbled clay until it's about a quarter of an inch thick.
Cut a quarter inch length.
That will be about the right size to make a standard wooden spoon.
Pinch the ends so you get rid of that cut edge.
You want everything nice and rounded here.
Now one end of that is going to be the bowl end of the spoon.
I'm going to do my little trick that I've done earlier,
which is rolling it between my fingers so that I end up with a little drumstick.
As it's flopping too much, I'll lie it down and roll it on the board,
which will give me a bit more control, like so.
Now I need to flatten the spoon bowl.
So I get some talcum powder on my fingers to stop sticking,
brush some onto the spoon as well, lay it on there,
and then with a nice rounded tool that's been dipped in talcum powder,
the end of my roller is perfect, I press quite hard into the clay.
And there we have the bowl of the spoon.
A little bit more shaping.
Now the handle will be very floppy and hard to control,
so when you lay it on your baking sheet,
you must make sure that that handle is streaming out in a nice straight line.
At this point, I'd like to trim the end because it is a little bit too long.
And there we have a little spoon all ready for baking.
Ten to fifteen minutes in the oven, and there you have it finished.
To make a rolling pin, you use my technique that I call grooving,
which is rolling the clay on the board back and forth with a needle.
And this makes a little rolling pin like this.
This is an old-fashioned type of rolling pin that would have been found in Victorian kitchens
and is often found certainly in British homes today.
First, I take my log of marbled clay.
I roll it thinner until it's about the diameter or the thickness
that I want the rolling pin to be.
In this case, it's a fairly mean quarter of an inch,
a little bit less because a rolling pin would be about three inches.
So you've got to think in the twelfth scale.
And then trim the ends.
And again, a rolling pin is often about twelve inches long,
so we'll cut approximately an inch length.
Now I need the side of a needle.
I'm going to roll this on the board to groove the ends.
And then the other end, back and forth, like so.
If you use a finer needle, you'll get finer little grooves.
So you can obviously alter it as to how you would like it to look.
Pinch the ends a little, give it a final roll, bake it for ten to fifteen minutes,
and there we are, another little kitchen utensil.
To make knives, these are baked in two parts.
First of all, we'll make the blade.
I get some black clay, because black clay I find always looks best
if you're going to put some metallic paint or powder on it.
Any of the black clay that shows through just simply looks as though
the knife hasn't been cleaned too well or it's tarnished a little,
which again, adds character.
I'll form a log and then get it to about a quarter of an inch,
cut a length, not important how long,
and then I'm going to make this pressed down onto the board,
because what I'm trying to do is form a log that I can then slice
when it's baked to become the thin blades of the knives.
If I bake it before slicing, I'll get much sharper edges
and a much more realistic knife blade.
I shape it down to a good point on one side.
It's a wedge shape now.
There's the wedge of clay.
Now, that's a good blade, but I need a little tang to fit into the handle.
So I'll put it down and continue shaping it
by pressing the side of my knife blade down like so
in order to flatten that edge.
Now, you can see the section.
Now, the next step with that is to bake it.
Bake it for a good 10 to 15 minutes,
because you want it to be nice and strong.
Underbaked clay is liable to crumble when you slice it to make blades.
Now, here is a piece that I have already baked,
and you can see that it's a nice section.
I've already cut the end off,
so you can see exactly the shape of the knife blade.
It's easier to cut this when the clay is still warm.
This applies to all polymer clay pieces.
They're much easier to cut if you need to cut them
when they are just still slightly warm.
So I'm going to cut a few little slices with my X-Acto,
cutting down firmly.
There's one little blade already to go into the handle,
and I'll cut another one.
Now, of course, you can trim these.
You can make them a little sharper if you want to.
You can trim the half a little
so that it doesn't stick into the handle too far,
and that's what I'm going to do.
Cut it there,
and then I shall cut it there to make a slimmer blade.
At this scale, the fact that the knife blade isn't sharp
really isn't a problem.
It will be barely noticeable.
To make the handles, I'm going to take some of my pine clay,
roll it thin,
cut about a quarter of an inch for the handle.
Now, this is the bit that you have to be a little bit careful.
I never keep my blades very sharp
when I'm working with polymer clay like this in miniatures
because you don't need the sharpness.
The blade is more of a tool.
So I shall cut down like that,
open up that little flap,
and it will receive the knife blade.
Now I need a little dab of tacky glue
on the end of my knife haft.
So I'll lighten a little dab of it,
and I will insert the blade in,
close it up,
and form it round the blade like that.
The tacky glue helps the new fresh clay
to stick to the already baked clay.
And there is the little knife,
ready to be baked again.
After baking for the second time,
again for about ten minutes,
you then need to coat the blade with silver paint,
and there you have a little knife all finished.
This project shows you how to make miniature brushes and brooms.
It's best to make the bristles out of some real bristles
so that the little brush really does work properly,
and then it's much more realistic miniature.
Polymer clay is perfect for making the brush handles.
First I shall show you how to prepare the bristles.
This is an ordinary household paintbrush,
and I find it's absolutely perfect for tiny brush bristles.
I'm going to use a tacky glue,
which is just the right thickness and consistency for this project.
I apply the glue really thickly to the end of the bristles.
I'd rather not touch it with my fingers,
or else it's going to go everywhere,
so I shall use my little tool, my needle,
to just smooth it all out.
Now, it's a good idea to compress those bristles slightly, like that,
and the way I do that is I usually place a piece of cardboard on the edge of a table,
lay down the bristles on it so they overhang the edge,
so the glue isn't touching anything,
and then weight it lightly with a piece of tile
just to keep all those bristles nice and angled together into a nice shape.
When the glue is completely dry,
and you do have to leave this for quite a long time because it's really thick glue,
leave it for several hours and just check that there's no tacky bits left,
and then you just need to get your scissors and cut it off across there.
The fact that one end of the bristles is held in the glue
means that you won't have bristles all pinging all over the place.
Here's one that I have now cut off that I did earlier,
so the glue is all dry,
and this sort of tacky glue is flexible,
so there's a certain amount of play.
Now, the next stage is to make the handle with polymer clay.
To do that, I start with a quarter-inch thick log of clay,
and I cut off a length about three-quarters of an inch.
Now I need to round one end,
because I'm trying to make a rounded end to the brush,
just like you get in old-fashioned wooden dustpan brushes.
Now I need to thin the other end, which is going to be the handle.
So I find the best way to do that is to hold it between my fingers, like so, and roll.
And there I have a thin end for the handle
and a wider bit for the head of the brush.
Lay it on my board, and then I press that bit, the flat bit, like that,
and I have the other end, which is the handle, going out thinner.
Trim it for a neat end.
Now I want to make it look as though the handle is a little bit of turned wood.
So I'm going to get my needle, and holding this up out of the way,
remove the glue, and I will just roll this gently, like that, to make an indentation.
There. And that gives a slight little bit of decoration on the handle.
Now, a ball applied to the end to finish it off.
And now I need to make a groove on the other side for the bristles to go into.
So I should press that down into the clay, and then I shape the broom around it.
And that will make a slot that I can then glue all the bristles into.
This is a short section of barbecue skewer that I've trimmed off.
It's about half an inch long, and it's just the right size to press into the center of the brush head.
Now I remove that, and lay it on the baking sheet, and bake it for 10 to 15 minutes.
After baking, I'll pop out that little bit of barbecue skewer,
and here's one that I've made in yellow clay that I did earlier, and is now baked.
And you can see the little groove from the barbecue skewer in there, and the grooved handle.
Now, the next thing to do is to insert the bristles into the slot.
So I take my little length, and I fit it into the groove,
just to check that I've cut it to the right length.
The tacky glue goes into the groove of the brush, nice and thickly,
and then I press in the bristles, like so.
I will clean away any excess glue, but I don't need to worry too much, as this glue dries clear.
And I like to splay out the bristles a little more, to make it look like a worn, used brush.
And when that has dried, you'll find, like this one, you can use it to sweep up the mess.
That's beautiful.
An alternative use of this technique is to make a broom head.
And there I have put a more rounded log, and used a barbecue skewer to make the slot, and into this.
This is, in fact, the bristles from a little fan brush that I found in a novelty store,
and that was perfect for putting into there, to make it look like an old-fashioned broom.
This project, I'm going to show you how to make baskets with polymer clay.
Baskets are a wonderful addition to the kitchen. You can fill them full of miniature vegetables and flowers.
You can leave them empty, just sitting around on the shelves, to add interest.
And you can make them in a wonderful variety of colors.
They are actually easier to make, in my opinion, than weaving with fibers.
First, you will need some conditioned clay in a suitable basket color.
I'm using some pale brown, but of course you could use ochre, dark browns, or anything else that you fancy.
Even colored baskets, if you want.
The first thing to do is to roll a very, very long, thin snake.
And I do that a similar way to what I showed you earlier,
but you're going to need to think of it being very thin and very long.
It's probably about a sixteenth, but the longer you can make it, the longer weaver you have in effect for your basket.
And how I do that is I hold the end in my left hand,
and I pull gently to ease it out of the main piece of clay as I roll, keeping my fingers moving all the time.
If the end breaks off, it doesn't matter, you just pick it up and continue.
That's about right. I've got probably about a foot of length of clay here.
So I'll trim it off.
And now I need to twist it to make it into a rope.
First I fold it in half exactly, and then I lay it down on the working surface to twist it into a rope.
Twist each end in a different direction, tries to fire it back a bit,
and then as it's on the surface you can support it,
and I give it the odd little pat down to hold it as I'm twisting and keep it under control.
There we are.
It doesn't need to be tremendously regular because baskets are made of natural fiber normally,
and so this doesn't have to look machine-made.
There we are.
Now I start coiling, and the first thing I do is I coil the base of the basket.
The best thing to do is to check which is the best way to coil,
otherwise as you wind round you will find that the rope will unwind.
So I can see that it's going to be happy it's going that way,
and I start with a little curl,
and I'm keeping that twist on it as I go round,
just trying to untwist a little bit, but just keep twisting it back up again
until you've got a large enough base for your basket,
which at a twelfth scale if you want to make a twelve-inch basket,
well then you need about an inch.
I'm going just a little bit bigger.
Now I'll need another weaver. I've reeled another one here.
Twist it up exactly the same way.
There.
And now I'm going to start working my way up the sides of the basket,
so I press it on there to start,
and just lightly press down as you go round,
coming up higher and higher.
One good idea is to marble some clay so it's all streaky,
and then you get an even more realistic effect.
It looks like sort of bundled raffia.
Get another weaver, fold it, and twist it up.
It's quite nice halfway up a basket to change colours.
You can use a former for this,
but I don't really find it's particularly necessary with these tiny little baskets.
If you're making a big square picnic basket,
you could always use a matchbox covered in foil to work up round the sides of it.
Just continue upwards until you have got the height of basket that you want.
Trim it off at the top.
And I'm supporting it with my finger inside while I push that down.
And now I can really affect the shape quite a lot by pushing it about,
blaring it out, or bringing it back in again if I want to,
to make a more domed basket.
There it is.
Now we only have to make the handle.
There are various ways of making handles for baskets.
You can have two lugs like that, two simple twisted ropes.
In that one I've used two different colours.
Or you can make a simple handle like this.
Or you can make a double one like that.
Two ropes pressed together, so that makes a more substantial handle.
Now I've made a slightly thicker rope to use as the handle.
I'll trim the end, press it inside against my finger.
My finger is supporting it, so I don't squash it out too far.
Curve it over.
Check the height.
That's rather nice, I rather like that high height.
And I'm going to put it down into the basket on the other side,
supporting it with my thumb, and pushing again.
And there we are.
Now, if I bake that without support, it would sag.
So I need a roll of foil.
That looks just about right.
And I'll slide that in, just like that.
And then I slice the basket off the board.
Always do that, slice off.
It saves any worries about distortion.
And then it's quite flimsy, but I can lift it up.
And then you can place it on your baking sheet
and bake it for the usual 10 or 15 minutes,
until it's nice and strong and hard.
After baking, remove the foil,
and there you have your little basket.
This project is going to show you how to make miniature tiles
for your doll's house.
Miniature tiles are great fun to make.
They're not difficult, and you can decorate them
in so many different ways, either with paint or powdered pastels.
To start with, I'm going to make some little tiles that are stamped.
This is the sort here.
I shall make a small rose design, like this,
and then colour it using artist's pastel,
which is a wonderful medium for use on polymer clay,
as it sticks to the raw clay quite well.
And then you can varnish to protect it.
The pastel gives you this lovely soft effect,
just as though the tiles have been embossed by the stamping
and then glazed with a very watery sort of glaze.
You'll need some scrap clay to start with to make the little stamp.
And I've rolled some out here on a tile
so that I won't need to move it when I put it in the oven to bake it.
To be sure that my stamp is exactly the same size
as the tiles I'm going to make, I get a piece of graph paper,
and I lay it over my sheet that I've rolled out,
and I prick through the corners.
I'm using a half-inch size to get a six-inch tile
equivalent at one-twelfth scale.
There, that's given me the size of my tile,
and I'll now just mark that there.
And I'm going to now inscribe it with a little design.
Now, you can take designs from tiles that you have in your bathroom
to match your little miniature house, if you wish,
or you can look in catalogues to get ideas
for all sorts of different styles.
To inscribe the tile, I use a blunt tapestry needle
because I don't want to make a really sharp pinprick sort of line.
I'm going to do a little rose.
I'll do the centre of the rose like that, a few petals.
The fact it's lying on a tile means that I can press quite hard
and I won't distort the clay,
and the firm backing makes it a lot easier to inscribe.
Now, a little stalk, a leaf there, a leaf there.
And to finish off, you might want to put some little dots
just to accentuate the corner of the tile, like that.
Now I need to cut away the scrap clay.
So, lining up the dots, I press down like that,
and I can pull that away.
The whole idea of doing this on the tile is so I don't have to remove it.
Final cut there, and there I have my little stamp, all ready for baking.
Put it in the oven, give it 10 to 15 minutes,
and then pop it off the tile.
It should come off quite easily if you put your knife blade underneath it.
Here is another stamp I made earlier that's come off the tile.
And in order to be able to use it more easily,
you can get a little bead, this is a polymer clay bead,
that has been stuck on to the back of yet another little stamp.
Turn it and you can see there's the stamped face with a little rose design.
Now I'm ready to start making the tiles.
To make the polymer clay tiles,
you need a reasonable size bathroom tile to work on, like this,
and you need to roll out some white clay,
presuming you want white tiles,
on the tile in between your two cardboard strips, as we did earlier.
Now I'm going to put the graph paper over the top of it again, like that,
and I'm going to prick through all along the lines of the half-inch spaces.
This takes quite a while and you have to be fairly patient.
When you've already pricked through some graph paper, an earlier sheet of tiles,
you'll find that you can just lay the graph paper onto another rolled out sheet of clay,
and all these little pin pricks will actually make a pattern of regular dots,
so you don't need to go through pricking another sheet of graph paper.
Right, there it is, all pricked.
Now take it away, and there I have a nice regular pattern to mark out my tiles.
The next thing to do is to use the little stamp.
Now you may feel that you want to stamp every tile,
or in this case I have actually stamped every other tile,
which gives quite a pretty result.
Now in order that my stamp doesn't stick to the tile,
I'll get some talcum powder on a soft brush and brush it all over my sheet of clay.
If you're using white clay for your tiles,
don't worry if you put on rather too much talcum powder,
just brush it away and it won't show after baking.
If you're using dark clay, then you really need to be a bit more sparing when you apply the powder.
Now I'm going to use my little stamp to stamp the design on the clay.
So I'll line it up fairly carefully with the first dots,
and impress, pressing reasonably hard.
You'll have to practice this to find out the best amount of pressure to put in.
And keep going, that's scrap, because I haven't got a complete tile.
Move down here, and again.
The talcum powder should be preventing the clay from sticking to my little stamp.
If it starts sticking, then that means I haven't got enough talcum powder on it.
It's a lot easier if you stamp the tiles before you cut them in between,
because the action of stamping will slightly distort the clay
and will push your lines out of true.
Now I have stamped the design all over my little panels of tiles.
I'm going to go in with the side of a metal ruler to mark them.
You could use a long knife blade for this if you wanted to.
Now I need to line up those dots very carefully, and press down.
You don't need to cut all the way down to the bottom,
because after baking I'm not going to separate the tiles.
I'm just going to use them as a complete panel
that you can then glue onto the wall of your doll's house.
I need to rotate the tile so I can have a better action for pushing down the next lines.
Continue until all the tiles have been marked.
I need to cut away all the excess clay around the tile panel.
In order to get an easier straight line, push down with your ruler
and then cut behind it with your X-Acto.
This seems to get a nice smooth result.
I only cut away the waste clay after stamping,
because if you stamp towards the edge of a panel of clay,
the stamp will actually distort the edge by pressing it out.
Now I'm going to colour the tiles with the Artist's Pastel.
Rub the Artist's Pastel onto a piece of scrap paper to release all the powder.
Now use a fine paintbrush and gather up a little bit of powder onto the paintbrush.
I'm going to go through doing the roses first.
A sideways action is the best one to accentuate the little ridges that you have embossed into the clay.
Keep loading my brush again in order to keep enough powder there,
but try not to use too much, otherwise it will flow all over the tile and spoil the little image.
Now I need to wipe my brush, get rid of the red, and I shall go in with the green.
I'm using a fairly strong dark green, because otherwise it will be barely visible.
And continue until they are all dusted with colour.
As you can see, you don't have to paint it in very accurately.
This is part of the effect of this sort of tile,
that the glaze has actually run into the colour and given it a lovely soft effect.
Now the tiles are finished and ready to be baked.
Give them a good long time, about 20 to 30 minutes,
because the actual action of baking them on a tile will prevent them from heating up quickly,
and you want them to be nice and strong when they come out of the oven.
After you've baked the tiles, remove them from the oven and wait until they have cooled down.
Then varnish them fairly liberally with a gloss varnish to simulate a ceramic glaze.
Then, finally, you can slip your knife blade underneath the little panel of tiles
and remove them gently from the tile.
Then they're ready to be glued onto the wall of your doll's house,
either over a kitchen sink, a bathroom basin, or perhaps a bath.
Music
Here are some variations using the techniques that you have learnt today.
Here is a little tea set using all the techniques that you have learnt.
The little jug is made in a small size to match the tea set size,
a tiny bowl, and it's been painted with flowers in red and green.
Moving on to plates, here is a wide variety of patterns that you can use on your miniature china.
It's a good idea not to try and paint concentric rings, they're very difficult to get straight,
and something more flowing like this, little spot decorations, are the easiest to do.
Or you can paint the rim of the plate like this with touches of gold paint to pick out the design.
Some of these plates have scalloped edges, and that's really very easy to do.
You need to do it at the stage where you have the dome completed,
but before you slice it off the board.
And then you go round the edge of the plate with a blunt needle,
just making a little indentation at even spaces all round.
Here is a cake plate.
This has been made by just gluing together two plates,
one a smaller one upside down, and the other one the right way up,
with a little log of baked clay between the two.
Here is a serving dish made using a bowl for the base with little lug handles on the sides.
The cover is made using a plate that is kept upside down,
and it has a little lug handle on it to finish it off.
Here are some variations of the bowls.
I've made some in terracotta colors for nice pie dishes.
Here is a jug and bowl, making a jug to match the bowl,
both quite a large size, the bowl made on a fairly large marble,
and then painted to match like a Victorian jug and bowl set.
This bowl has been decorated upside down with a scalloped effect
using a paper clip pressed into the clay when the bowl is on the marble.
This bowl is simulating stoneware.
I've used gray clay, and I've mixed in the dust that you get
from the bottom of a packet of tea bags.
Here we have a variety of jugs made in different color clays,
and some have been made white and painted
with pretty designs that I have copied from real China,
antique China in this case.
This little jug is a Tudor style, it has no lip,
and the glaze is done by painting just the top of the jug
with brown acrylic paint to simulate a jug
that has been dipped into a glaze only part way,
and then I varnished it with gloss varnish to make it look like a glaze.
Here we have a variety of vases, all sorts of shapes.
You can see this little one at the front here,
this jug here is another one using cream clay mixed with tea bag dust.
These ginger jars are made without piercing the clay at all,
and I've made a little lid for them by cutting a ball of clay in half
and patting it onto the top of the shaped vase.
The bottles are made in much the same way as that, with just a thinner neck.
Moving on to the tiles, here is a panel of tiles that I have made,
and these as you can see have been grouted.
The way to do that is separate your tiles after you've made them,
glue them to your doll's house wall,
and then you can grout in between the tiles
with some form of wall filler like spackle or poly filler.
These tiles have been stamped, I made a little stamp
by pressing polymer clay into a charm.
And these are tiles simulating the beautiful Delft tiles.
Here I used a dip pen dipped into blue acrylic paint
so that I could get the really fine lines
and draw the little images of the Delft tiles.
Then I diluted the acrylic paint and went in and washed in the color of the pale blue.
These tiles, again a grouted panel, are based on Art Nouveau designs,
and the same technique was used as for the roses,
brushing pastel color powder over the embossed shape.
These are simulated creamware tiles, Victorian creamware,
and I haven't painted them at all, I've just left them completely matte and simple,
and they would be a very attractive addition to any doll's house kitchen, or even a bathroom.
Here are some further ideas, very simple tiles.
I marbled the clay in the same way as we did for the simulated pine.
The potting technique that you have learned can be used to make so many different vessels,
and here's an example of some of them.
Here I have a bucket made by potting the clay into a fairly large vessel.
I made holes in either side, brushed it with silver powder, baked,
and then varnished it.
The handle is made from a loop of wire that's bent into the holes
with a little log of pine-simulated clay that's been grooved,
threaded on before baking.
Here is a plant pot made with the potting technique,
and here is another one using Sculpey Granitex, which gives a lovely stone effect.
And then I have decorated the outside a little by pressing the handle of a paintbrush
to make vertical ridges and to make a rim.
Here are some storage jars that have little polymer clay corks.
Once I'd made the storage jar, I formed a log of clay
and pressed in little shapes to make the corks, removed them, and then baked them.
Here are some mugs, again, potted vessels, keeping them very straight-sided
and applying little handles, and then, of course, you can paint them
with all sorts of designs.
Here are some variations on the pots we made.
You can make all sizes, depending on the size of the former you've made.
Here is a kettle, just the perfect thing to sit on the doll's house stove.
It is made in exactly the same way as the teapot,
except the handle has been made more square with a little black log pushed onto the top.
If you have enjoyed making all the miniatures in this video,
you may be interested in the two other videos that I have made in this series.
There is also my miniatures book, Making Doll's House Miniatures with Polymer Clay.
This covers many more techniques for making little pieces
and larger ones for your doll's house.
You may also be interested in the book I have written
on Making Miniature Dolls with Polymer Clay.
If you enjoy working with polymer clay, you may be interested in my third book,
Making Polymer Clay Jewelry, which has many different ideas in it.
All three books are published by Castle in the United Kingdom
and by Sterling in the United States.
They are available worldwide.
If you are interested in further uses and other ideas for polymer clay,
you should contact your National Guild in your country.
In the United States, you should send a stamped addressed envelope
to the National Polymer Clay Guild, Suite 115-345,
1350 Beverly Road, McLean, Virginia, 22101.
Or you can leave a voicemail message on 202-895-5212.
If you are in the United Kingdom, send a stamped addressed envelope
to the British Polymer Clay Guild at Meadow Rise,
Wertham, Dis, Norfolk, IP-221SQ.
Or you can email at polguild at heesa.demon.co.uk.
Polymer clay is a truly remarkable medium
because it can be used in so many creative ways.
Be creative yourself, experiment, but above all, have fun.
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Thank you.