Pinterest Road Test - DIY Clay Decorations

Clay Christmas Decorations from The Woodside Kitchen

The Woodside Kitchen's
original clay decorations

I've been looking for a good bake at home clay recipe for a while. The last time I made salt clay, my dog ate the decorations right off the tree. So finding one that didn't appear edible was a good thing, and corn flour and bicarb soda does not sound appealing to me. 

So first things first ingredients...

The Woodside Kitchen gave the ingredients as Cornstarch, Baking Soda and Water, but there was a lot of discussion in the comments about the decorations cracking or staying rubbery which comes down to some different names for ingredients depending on where you are. What you want to use is:

1/2 cup of Corn Flour
1 cup of Bicarb Soda (or Baking Soda - basically needs to be sodium bicarbinate)

3/4 cup of water

Ensure you are using the correct ingredients otherwise you will not get a hard clay decoration or you may get cracking.

 The mixing together is very easy. Just put it all in a saucepan, stir together then heat over low-medium heat.

There were some questions about whether you could do this in the microwave... I did not test this, but if you are going to give it a go only heat it in small increments (20-30 seconds) at a time, and stir in between. If you try this, please let me know.

It's done when it becomes stiff and silky (like smooth mash potatoes to borrow The Woodside Kitchen's term)

Scoop it out into a clean bowl and cover with a damp cloth until it cools slightly so you can knead it.

I left it for about 15 minutes and it was still warm when I kneaded it (I was impatient) but you can wait longer, especially if you are giving it to your kids to knead and want to make sure they don't burn themselves. The damp cloth will stop it from drying out in the meantime.

Sprinkle some more cornflour on the bench or breadboard (easier cleanup) and knead out as you would any dough. Mine was quite sticky so used more cornflour to keep it doughy. The kneading and rolling out is lots of fun (and cleanup is very easy) so feel free to let your kids have fun.

 

Roll out to 1cm high then cut with cookie cutters, or mould into whatever shape you want. I also did coin size disks that I intend to paint up and stick magnets on the back. I'm also replacing my tree star that my dog ate ;) which I moulded by hand.

Lay your decorations out on a tray with some baking paper. I skipped putting corn flour on the paper and regretted it - they all stuck and I had to sand the paper off, so don't forget that!

If you are planning to hang these on your tree, remember to poke a hole in them for your ribbon (I used a chopstick). I also pressed little circles around the edges, but you could do anything to decorate, or keep them plain for painting.

Pop them in the oven to bake. Here's another point that comes up when sourcing recipes the world over... The Woodfire Kitchen says 1 hour at 175', but I suspect this is Fahrenheit (which would be 80'c) As I cooked mine for only 1/2 hour at 175' and they were rock hard I suspect this is the case. I'll test again at 80'c and see how they go. If you beat me to it, please post in the comments!

The Woodfire Kitchen recommends flipping them over half way and this would stop any bubbling or cracking - and give a nice even finish. As I said, mine were rock hard 1/2 hour in so I just took them out. I had some bubbles and a few small cracks, but nothing worth worrying about.

One thing I did do was give them all a quick sand to clean up the edges and take off any imperfections, which I think made all the difference.

Now time for painting!

I gave them 2 coats of white acrylic then painted some lovely Scandinavian designs in red. You could also finish them all off with a coat of lacquer to give them a nice gloss finish.

Overall a pretty easy project, but I'm glad I did a quick Google search to confirm ingredients before I started as they could have gone very wrong without that clarification.

Have you tried this project? Let me know how you went.

Road Test Results

Ease - I'd put this as low-medium difficulty. There was some confusion about the ingredients but with a quick Google search I got to the bottom of these

Time - A bit time consuming. All up about 6 hours as you have to wait for baking time and drying time between each coat of paint. But this is up to you as to how much effort you put in.

Ability - Beginners can do this project quite easily. However if you aren't used to painting details keep this to a minimum. Try block colours or even use stamps.
Cost - Cheap as free. I had cornflour and bicarb in my cupboard. But even if you had to buy the supplies you could get away with this project for around $5.

Cleanup - easy, the uncooked clay dissolves in water so can easily be cleaned up. I would tip any extra on a patch of garden you don't mind much about though as it may clog up your sink.

Links

Original Inspiration - The Woodside Kitchen
Pinterest Inspiration Pin - Cornstarch & Baking Soda Clay Christmas Decorations

The Next Stage of Pizza Ovening

I was going to hold out posting this until it was fired up, but I couldn't wait.

Last weekend my dad and I finished the dome on the long awaited Pizza Oven. And while it is not yet finished (the dome will be covered by an outer wall, then we have to render and tile), it has now reached the stage where it can be used as a functional oven.

Needless to say we are all pretty excited - Mum actually bought some bubbly for the occasion.

The last steps of the dome...

As I said last time, the top of the dome is very fiddly as you have to cut all the bricks to fit and they need to hold their own weight against each other so they don't fall in when you take the inside structure down. It's a whole lot of physics that I don't really understand, but I was very glad that my dad works in engineering and has a better grip on these things.

All the bricks fit, now we can  get the mortar in

Just because you're working doesn't mean you can't have nice nails.

The last bit of mortar!

We let the dome dry overnight before removing the inside structure as we wanted to make sure it was well and truly dry and wasn't about to crack

The next day...

We got the inside structure out and the dome didn't fall down! I was pretty tense at this point so was thrilled that it worked. 

You may notice a hole above the arch though. There was one brick that wasn't quite set when we put the inside structure in and it fell out. I had every intention of patching it back up once the dome was finished. This was an INSANE decision - I did it, but with a lot of swearing and mortar in my hair. 

How stoked are we that it worked!

Inside the dome, doesn't that brickwork look professional...

Dad doing one more layer of mortar to neaten it up. We ran out not long after this, but he assures me that he has finished this rendering since then so the oven will look nice for Christmas.

It looks almost professional (I'm very proud) :D

Next update on the Pizza Oven will be the first firing!

Leave your suggestions on what to cook in it below...

Happy December | Snowflake Curtain DIY

Happy December everyone!

We are now officially on the count-down to Christmas. I can tell because Pinterest is full of Christmas cookies and elf on the shelf ideas, the shops are starting to go mental and the temperature in Brisbane has gone through the roof.

With only four weeks until Christmas I'm on a mad rush to get all my presents in order and because I love handmade and am a poor uni student there is a lot of crafting going on in my house at the moment. So I'm going to share some of my projects over the coming weeks. I'm also introducing a new section called 'Pinterest Road Test' where I take some of the most popular Pinterest DIYs and put them under my DIY scrutiny... should be fun!

So to kick things off I'm starting with one of the decorating idea I found on the pinning site...

Snowflake Curtain

This project was inspired by Bugs and Fishes. This pin is going crazy at the moment, and was too beautiful not to use, even though snowflakes are about the furthest thing away from Christmas in Brisbane.

I'm sure you remember making snowflakes as a kid. I never seemed to got the hang of it so they always fell apart. Luckily I have a bit more manual dexterity these days, so cutting out snowflakes wasn't as traumatic as I remember it.

I started by following some design patterns I found online (here), but after a about a dozen I just went for it with my own designs. 

This project is a little time consuming but it was something that could be done easily while watching TV so didn't feel like a major time commitment. I think I might make this a regular Christmas task and add more every year, as I can imagine that the more you have the better the effect.

Road Test Results

Ease - This is a super easy project that can be easily replicated. 

Ability - You don't need any special skills or ability, this is a child friendly Pin!
Cost - Dirt cheap. I didn't spend any money, just used some paper I had lying around the house

Links

Original Inspiration - Bugs & Fishes
Snowflake Patterns - Marcel's Kids Crafts

Pinterest Inspiration Pin - Easy peasy snowflake curtain

Burnett Lane & Brew

Much to many people's surprise Brisbane has started to get some awesome spots with good cafes and atmosphere. Today I spent the day out in the city for my aunt's birthday and we found ourselves in several of these awesome spots.

One of those was a stroll down Burnett Lane, which until only recently was a loading zone for the shops in Queen St mall. It was one of those grungy alley's that you walked past quickly and would never walk down unless you were accompanied by some burly men or ninjas and even then you might reconsider it.

Now there's a growing collection of restaurants and cafes. One of which is Brew which we ended up at today for a cider. This atmospheric cafe and wine bar is at the very end of Burnett Lane and on a drizzly Brisbane day it looked incredibly inviting. 

This lane way has a bit of a shady history, so it's great to see businesses such as Brew moving in to reclaim this part of Brisbane. My aunt and I enjoyed our cider at the back of the cafe which used to be a store room for the buildings above. There were many hipsters, a very uncomfortable looking family and two little girls that looked like they were having a play date (it was very cute, and way more sophisticated than anything I would have done at 6 years old).

I'm also looking forward to watching the street art scene progress in Brisbane. I work in West End, so see a lot of it come and go and I can see Burnett Lane becoming a primo spot for new street art.

Cheers from Brew. I heartily recommend it!

Visit Brew here

Sewing Day

I feel like I have been very neglectful of my sewing this year. Uni has completely taken over my life, but now that exams have finished it's time to get cracking on a brand new batch of hot water bottle monsters.

It does always feel odd making something for warm cuddles when it is so hot outside, but I find myself preparing for the northern hemisphere's winter as well.

Today I started with some new ideas of what I was going to make so new it was going to be a fun day (sewing days are always fun, but today was going to be more fun)

I knew I wanted to tackle a line of 'woodland' animals with a twist so was starting with some basic shapes then introduced the felt...

I love working with felt. It's like drawing with fabric, and why I always hand sew. This lets me get the details just right and continue to play around with placement so I can let my characters come to life while I make them.

A sneak peak at the 3 new hot water bottle monsters that will be hitting the store tomorrow.

There are more to come... and all are new designs, so stay tuned.

I made an orchid!

It seems a cruel twist of fate that my mother who has the greenest thumbs in all the land has created an offspring who just has to look at foliage and watch it wilt.

My garden is as dead as dead could be. I am in the process of trying to bring it back to life, but at the moment it's in the stage where I get depressed going outside. 

But apparently I am learning! Or orchids just like to be left to their own devices (I suspect its the later). 

Years ago my mum gave me an orchid she had found deposited in a tree on her footpath by a friendly neighbour. I diligently bought some orchid mix, planted it up and duly forgot about it. It was quite happy to sit in its pot staying not-dead and not-flowering and I was happy to accept this arrangement.

Then a couple of weeks ago two big green sprouts came out of it and I didn't dare to hope they were flower spikes but it turned out they were! And now I have two amazing sprays of flowers in my brown backyard.

Don't ask me what species it is - it's flowering and that's all that I care about :)

Let me know if you have any miraculous gardening stories

edit - had to look it up. I think it's Oncidium altissimum. Let me know if that's wrong

Pizza Oven Weekend

Last Christmas my dad received this book from my Aunt - which I think was a not so subtle hint that she was expecting many fresh pizzas during future visits.

But my dad and I have been steadily progressing this year with building a pizza oven in their backyard. This has required a lot of heavy lifting and has taught me that I can actually lay bricks and that my dad and I work pretty well together.

We were hoping to have the main dome finished this weekend but rain set in and put a stop to our work. So we've got about 2 rows of  bricks left before we can use it as an actual pizza oven.

Saturday morning did not start off well. It had rained all night and didn't look like it was clearing up any time soon. Still - at least the view was nice.

The pizza oven was where we left it last time we worked on it. The arch had been completed and we had done three rows of the dome. But with a giant hole in the top our oven was still more of a fire pit. Dad and I crossed our fingers that the rain would clear and had a cup of coffee in the meantime.

***

Mum's garden was enjoying the rain more than we were.

***

When the rain cleared up we managed to get another row of bricks on the oven. The next stage is a bit more fiddly. Now that the bricks are hanging over the gap, there is too much gravity working against them so the mortar won't hold it up.

We placed a slat of mdf on some buckets and used a weak mortar to make a false dome that would hold up the rest of the dome.

This would usually take about an hour to dry, but with the weather it didn't look promising.

We prepared for more rain over night and crossed our fingers again for sunny weather on Sunday.

***

Hooray! A promising sight for a days work.

The top of the dome is probably the most fiddly of all the work we've done. Each brick now needs to be cut to size in order to fit in the gap left by the last brick.

Dad working on cutting each brick to size. This process took a while and slowed us down considerably.

So this is about as far as we got by Sunday lunchtime when it started to rain again.

There is only a little hole left to fill up at the top and we will have the inside dome ready for firing. Stay tuned for the next update.

Mum's nosy chickens.