Decorate your house with clay flowers

BENGALURU: Designing the decor of your house can be challenging, especially with thousands of choices available in the market. Have you felt crippled when you walk into that megastore only to find you did not get the vases and cloth flowers of your choice?

In this project, with help from Athiya Nasreen’s blog and Facebook page Maple Mixed Media, I put together a tutorial to make clay flowers to decorate your house.
Materials: Oil colours - crimson red, golden yellow, green and orange, rose flower and leaf veiners, cutters, air dry clay in white, craft glue, small foam ball, ball tool, poking tool, frilling tool, pasta machine, flower vase and a fruit tray to help curve rose petals into shape.

Method:
 Mix two parts orange and one part yellow colour to get a good blend of golden yellow.
 Place this clay between two transparent plastic sheets and flatten it using the pasta machine.
 Use a rose petal cutter to cut out petals and use the veiner to create the petal and leaf texture.
 Use a fruit tray or any curvy bowl, to give these petals their spherical curve.
 Start pasting the petals around the foam ball on a wire/thin stick.
 The petals that you have used the veiner on, you may paste those for the outer layers.
 Use your fingers to give curves and slightly roll the edges of the clay rose. Remember that when you do this, the wire meant for the stalk should stay intact. Give this rose flower a painted finish with shades of orange.
 Use the rose leaf cutter and cut out stalk pieces. Roll these on to the stalk.
 Create a separate bud, to give it the real look.
 Use the leaf cutter and veiner to make the leaves, and fix them to the wire. Paint them using shades of brown.
 Fix this set to the main rose flower stalk. And add the bud to the set.
 Fix a bunch of these flowers and place in a vase. Your clay rose flowers are ready.

Pictures Courtesy: Athiya Nasreen
(http://www.imprintshandmade.com/)