Tutorial Tuesday - Folded Box

This week I was supposed to share with you some more air dry clay projects. Unfortunately I have been unable to fully complete this ready for this week so I have a quick little folded box tutorial for you this week and the other air dry clay projects will be with you next Tuesday instead!

You will need:
2 squares of paper/card

This week we are making a simple origami style folded box. You can use this as a little basket or if you make 2 then you have a box with a lid. They are great for using to give little gifts and are quick and easy to make once you know how. They can be created in any size you would like.

All you need to remember is that one square will need to be 1/4" smaller, so if you use a 6"x6" piece of paper then the other piece will need to be 5 3/4" x 5 3/4".

1. Start by folding your piece of paper in half both ways, so you end up with a cross in the middle of your paper.

2. Fold each corner into the middle.

3. Fold 2 sides into the middle.

4. Unfold the 2 sides you just folded and the triangles. Leave the other 2 triangles folded in.

5. Now fold the 2 long sides (with the triangles) into the middle.

6. Fold up one of the pointed ends on the 3rd fold line down. 

7. Stand up one of the straight folded sides and fold along an existing fold line to make a neat corner. 

8. Repeat for the other side of the box and then the other end.

9. Fold in both the triangles to finish off your box.

10. If you want a lid for your box then make another by following the above steps.

Now you can fill with goodies!

If you are using a patterned paper then you will want to make sure that the pattern is facing down while you are making up the box so that it ends up on the outside.

Have fun making boxes!

Happy Crafting,

Maxine

xx

Tutorial Tuesday - Air Dry Clay

Hello, hope everyone out there is well. Welcome to Tutorial Tuesday again, sorry for not getting one done last week but I was totally thrown out to sync with the bank holiday! Hope you all had a lovely one.
This week I have been having a play with some air dry clay. I have 2 things to show you this week and will have some further projects for making with air dry clay next week!

So this week you will need:
- Air Dry Clay (I used the 500g block but we also do a 1kg)
- Rolling Pin
- Small and medium sizes bowls
- Stamps
- Ink or Paint
- Cookie cutters

Start by rolling your clay out to about 0.5-1cm thick, making sure it is just bigger than the size of your small bowl.

Now take your stamp and a dye or permanent ink pad and stamp all over your piece of clay.

Then take your small bowl and place it on the clay. Using a knife cut off the excess clay.

Place the cut out circle inside the larger sized bowl and gently press down to make it into a bowl shape. 

Now leave to dry over night. The pack states 24 hours to dry.

In the morning I gently removed the clay from inside the bowl and while it had dried enough to retain it's shape it was still damp and I could tell that it was not completely dry. 

I gently sanded the edges of the bowl to make it slightly more rounded.

Then I added some silver paint to the edges.

It will need to stand for another 12 hours to be completely dry.

Mine is not perfect but I like the charm of it. If you want the edges to be more even then you will need to take more care when you place the clay into the bowl. I kind of just plonked mine in!!

You can also see that the colour ink I used faded over night. If you want a more vibrant colour then you will want to use a darker ink or you could also use paint. 

With my left over clay from trimming around the bowl I made some cute clay tags. For these I just used some cookie cutters to cut out the shapes. Then I used an un-inked stamp and just pressed it into the clay to give a de-bossed impression. In the morning I used some coloured chalks on the 2 scalloped circles to help the impressions stand out more. You can see the difference doing this made compared to the plain circle tag. If you want to make them into tags like this make sure that you make the hole in the top while the clay is still wet!

Hope this has given you some ideas that you can do with air dry clay and if you do make any of these projects we would love to see. Feel free to share a link here or on our Facebook Page.

Happy Crafting,

Maxine xx

P.s. If you like the bows and earrings that are shown in my bowl above then I make these too! Pop on over the my handmade Facebook Page to see more bows and to purchase! https://www.facebook.com/ButtonBowBoutique