Nap time crafts: Polymer Princesses

May 15, 2015

For another project, I’ve recently been making a lot of very cute and girly things that I haven’t been able to give to Amelie. It’s made me feel so bad, she comes into my craft room (I say craft room, I’ve basically stolen the conservatory and renamed it. Anyone else find that craft stuff seems to just breed?!), she gets all excited and I have to quickly remove her from the area before she creates damage. So I decided to make her some little princesses from fimo. I gave her some lumps too (small ones, this stuff is expensive!) and she made some grotesque looking warped princesses too.

These are really easy to make, and take about 15 minutes per doll. These ones are only tiny, about 5cm high, but you could make them any size.

You will Need (Per Princess):

Polymer clay (I use fimo soft) – about 1cm lump of skin tone and 2cm in your chosen dress colour
Super Glue
Embroidery thread for hair
black and red permanent fine liner

1. Thoroughly clean your hands and dry them on something non-fluffy. Odd as that might sound, this stuff picks up dust and fluff and quickly looks manky!! Begin by rolling the lumps you need. From pink, roll a pea sized ball for the head and two thin sausages, about 2cm long, for the arms. Then take the body lump – here I’m making Belle (obviously…) so I’ve used dark yellow. Roll the lump into a ball, then a sausage, then roll one end so that it is slightly narrower at the top. Press the bottom on the work surface to flatten and make it stand.

2. Press the arms onto the side of the body, and the head on the top. You can learn from my mistakes here as I didn’t secure the head enough (it popped off on first play and had to be glued back), so really make sure the pieces are adhered to one another, you can use a cocktail stick or a knife to blend the edges together.

3. Place the princess(es) on a lined baking tray and bake in the oven according the manufacturers guidelines. Whilst they cook, prepare the hair. Create a loop of embroidery thread around your fingers, about 10cm long, and wrap the thread around 6 times. Cut through the loops to create strands. Once the dolls are out of the oven and cooled, place some glue onto the back of the head and stick the strands on one by one, starting from the front and working your way down till there are no more bald bits!

4. Tie or plait the hair however you like, then take a fine permanent pen and draw on a smiley little face.

Here are the some of other dolls I made:

Can you work out who they are?! I liked the Anna princess best – I just added a cape and rolled it in place, put a bit of white thread in her hair and plaited it. Snow White’s body was made from two lumps of clay rolled together, with red thread for the hairband.

Tia xx

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Life in Pictures

Mar 30, 2015

Life in Pictures is our weekly mini-gallery of what our Little Buttons have been up to over the past seven days.

Frozen Olaf Snowglobe DIY

Dec 12, 2014

Do you Want to Build a Snowglobe?

Like 99.9% of all little girls, my 2 and a half year old is obsessed with Frozen. What IS it with that film? I now find her singing Let it Go in her sleep (cute) and find me singing it in my head. All. Day. Long (annoying).

If you’re after a cute little Christmas Project, this is a great one to do with kiddies. Obviously it doesn’t have to be Olaf, you could just make a snowman (or The Snowman!) or use a plastic figurine instead of making one from fimo.

You Will Need:

Polymer Clay (e.g. Fimo) in white, orange and black)
Jam Jar
Superglue
Blue acrylic paint
glitter & little stars

1. To make Olaf: Begin by rolling two balls of white clay and pressing together to make his body.

2. Make the head – this is probably the trickiest bit as its a weird shape – take an oval of clay and attach two smaller bits as per the image below and smooth together with your fingers.

3. Attach a little tooth and some eyeballs.

4. roll a cone of orange for the nose, some black eyes and then some eyebrows. To be honest, I slightly regretted the eyebrows. I mean, Olaf HAS eyebrows, but I think I made him look a bit worried… oh well. You can decide if you want eyebrows or not!

5. Press the head onto the body. Roll some thin strips of black for the arms and some coal buttons and press these in place. Bake as per the manufacturers instructions. When it has cooled, glue it onto the centre of the jar lid, leave to set and then paint blue.

6. Now the fun bit! Pour glitter and twinkly metal stars into the jar. Some DIY snowglobe tutorials use painted crushed eggshells for snow so you could do this, but I wanted mine to be super sparkly more than anything else.