Autumn Leaves Votive Ring

Autumn Leaves Votive Ring by Irit Shalom

Hello my dear crafty friends and welcome to my October Fall votive tutorial made for you with Makin's Clay® products.

First, I need to say that I meant to make a clay covered fall bangle. I opened the bangle and it was so tiny to wear that I decided to go to Plan B and to use the wooden base as my glass candle votive holder. And yes, Plan B actually worked.

So here is my tutorial for you and I hope that you will always keep Plan B in your crafty mind.

Materials:

Makin's Clay® - Natural, Light Adobe, Olive, Yellow, Peach and Merlot
Makin's Professional®: 

• ULTIMATE CLAY MACHINE®
• ULTIMATE CLAY EXTRUDER® - Disc #4
• Cutting mat large

Makin's® Push mold - Leaves
Beacon® 3-in-1 Adhesive 
Wooden bangle bracelet
Glass candle votive 
Gel medium based paints 
Paintbrushes 
Die cutting machine
Leaf dies 

Step by step tutorial:

E

1.  Mix Natural, Light Adobe and Merlot Makin's Clay® and insert into the Ultimate Clay Extruder® with round hole disc #4.




2. Cover the wooden bare bangle with the extruded clay all around.

Push mold leaves

2. Use the Ultimate Clay Machine®  to roll three piece of clay in Yellow and Peach, beginning on setting #1 and rolling progressively through the settings to end on setting #4.  Let dry.

3. Make Olive clay leaves using the Leaves push mold and let them dry.


4. This next step has a new technique I have not seen done before.  I tried to die cut the dry clay sheet with the very delicate die and was unsuccessful.  I decided to experiment and  die cut it with two layers and it worked.
So let me show you the technique of die cutting clay sheets with a very delicate die.
First make a cut and do not even try to pull the cut shape out of the die.

Put the die with the first clay layer in it over the second sheet of dry clay and now die cut both layers.

Die cut first leaf

Die cut leave again

And now the big surprise: you can take the clay cut out of the die and it has two gorgeous layers!

You will also need to remove any remaining clay from the die. 

Two layered leaf 

Here are just a few more leaves I made with the same technique:

More leaf examples

5. Paint the votive and  all the die cut and molded leaves with a mix of gel medium based paint. I
 used Art Anthology paints, but any gel medium based paint will work.

First, I painted the base with two colors of paint and you can already see the yellow glass votive inside the bangle. I was very happy to find one that was a perfect fit for the bangle size.  Next, I painted all leaves with more colors:

Add color over bangle

Add color to leaves

6. Let the paint dry and arrange the leaves of both kinds over the clay base using Beacon® 3-in-1 Adhesive. As  you can see, the cluster  of leaves is not  flat and there are layers of leaves glued one over another.

Glue leaves to bangle

 And here is how nice it looks on my vintage things table.

Finished candle holder on display