Makin's Clay® Blog

Tuesday, February 21, 2017

Dragonfly Garden

Dragonfly Garden by Erin Reed

I wanted to create something for St. Patrick's Day, and the idea was to create something like a Celtic knot, well that was much harder than I thought. I played round the with the original idea I had in mind, to take clay and use the Makin's Professional® Ultimate Clay Extruder® to make tubes and swirl them around into shapes, and it ended into looking like a vine garden, so I added some some flowers and a dragonfly and boom I have a mixed media dragonfly garden!

Materials:

Makin's Clay® - Merlot, Straw, Grape Leaf

Makin's Professional®

Ultimate Clay Extruder® - Discs #7, #8
Cutting Mat

Metal Embellishments - Momenta & Prima
Mica - Ranger & Imagination Crafts
Wood Block - Bottle Cap Inc
Paint - Tattered Angels
Glass
Gems
Glue - Beacon Adhesives

Instructions:

1) Use the Ultimate Clay Extruder® and Disc #7 to extrude Straw clay. Glue 3 glass beads to a wooden block with Beacon 3 and 1 Adhesive and start adding swirls around the beads gluing as you go.

2) Now use the extruder with disc #8 and extrude Merlot clay to make more clay strands. Attached these around the base making more swirls.

3) Repeat set 2 with Grape Leaf clay.

4) Spray down the clay with a little water to make it "sticky" and then paint on mica powder in similar colors - gold, purple, and green to make everything shimmer.

5) I found some pretty metal flowers, gems, and a metal dragonfly to finish the look. Glue them in place with Beacon 3 and 1 Adhesive.

Just because a project does not go the way you wish it to go does not mean you should give up on it, you may just create a dragonfly garden for yourself!

Erin Reed - Designer & Artist