White Cherry Blossom Double Headband Tutorial

So we went to the coast last week and I made my daughter a daisy chain crown and that’s where I had the inspiration for this week’s tutorial. This is so easy to make it hurts! These are really popular at the moment appearing in all the weekly magazine style pages. You can buy them online for roughly £21 upwards, but I made this for about 50p in 30 minutes! They would be ideal for summer festivals, weddings, children’s tea parties, photography props, May Day or just wear it with a pretty summer dress.

Materials used;
Silk/artificial flowers
Glue gun
Scissors
Florists ‘Nutscene Natural Mossing Twine’ (you can buy this from HobbyCraft for about £1.29 for 75M)
Tape measure

1) Firstly, cut 6 strands of twine that are roughly 30” in length. Knot three pieces together at the top and start plaiting until you’re left with one long plait and secure with another knot. Do the same with the other strands.

2) Place one of the plaits around your head and see where it looks good and double knot it. Make the other plait slightly larger in size and knot that too. I left the plaited tails at the end my loop but it will work if you don’t want them.

3) Figure out where you want your flowers and how many of them you want. I have used 6 flowers and placed them on both bands to one side. You can also have them evenly spaced out or even just one flower at the side.

4) Trim the plastic stem so the flower can be glued onto the band.

5) Heat up your glue gun and stick away….

6) All finished! You can also vary what I have done here too. You could make round plaited disks to stick your flowers onto or even loop the twine at the ends and attach two ribbons to act as a tie. Add a bit of faux ivy and pearls to children’s May Day crown. Anyways I hope you enjoyed this weeks tutorial.

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Mushroom Carving for Casting Tutorial

In this tutorial I will show the different stages that went into carving this little mushroom out of wax. It’s just a basic and simple base relief that I have done quickly just to show you how it works. I will try and cover other areas of carving soon, such as rings, shrinkage, clasps etc. By carving wax you can create your own pendants, earrings, bracelets, rings or even sculptures. You can make a one off piece of jewellery or multiples using just the original pattern. At the bottom of this tutorial, I have also included a PDF list of equipment, useful websites and books on the subject that are handy if you want to start carving wax.

Materials and equipment I used;
Greaseproof paper
Masking tape
Pencil
Ferris blue wax
Good lighting
Scribe
White china marker
Tempera/poster paint
Washing up liquid
Paint brush
White spirit
Saw and
Micro motor and assorted burrs
Large wax file
Small assorted files
Tissue paper and ear buds
Wolf carving tools
Very fine sandpaper grade
Talcum powder
Fibreglass pen
1. Draw or trace an image onto a piece of greaseproof paper. Turn the paper over and trace the lines of your original drawing.

2. Cut a piece of wax with either a saw which is slightly larger than your image and cover the smooth upper side with white china marker. Place your image over this and secure with masking tape. Start to trace over your drawing with a scribe firmly enough for it to mark the wax underneath. Remove the paper and go over the lines in the wax again so you will have a strong image.

3. Mix a small bit of white tempera/ poster paint with a tiny amount of washing up liquid and paint the mixture over you wax image then leave to dry for a few minutes. When dry, remove the excess paint from your wax with white spirit. You should have a crisp, clean image on your wax now.

4. Now it’s time to cut the image out. I do this by using my frame saw first, and then using my micro motor with the largest burr attached and finally using my large wax file to file right up to the edges. If you can acquire a selection of small files, these are great for fiddly and awkward edges (I will post a full list of my files in a PDF at the bottom of this tutorial)

5. You can start removing wax from the back of your image now too. You can do this using a micro motor and burr or even filing it away with your large wax file. I opted for the micro motor as it’s the lazy way!

6. As we are doing a base relief, it’s time we started rounding off the edges and creating depth. I start rounding off the outer edges first with my carving tools and then I used the image lines as a guild to start creating depth so it will become 3 dimensional, like in the picture. Always create the high and low points and overall shape before you start adding the details. (There is a stage during carving when you think you have ruined it or you want start all over again. But keep on going! I have felt like this with everything wax I have carved so far but I have kept on with it and in the end you will have something that you will be happy with. Constantly look at your wax, what you have done so far and your reference image if you have one. If you carve a bit too much away…you can always add more melted wax. If something snaps, you can always fuse it back together. If at any point you start getting frustrated with it, have a break and come back to it. You will see things differently after a break)

7. Once you’re happy with your basic shape, and all the curves and different levels of the carving have been created, you can remove more of the excess wax from the back of the carving using either burrs or scraping it out with carving tools. By removing excess wax from the back, you will use less metal when it gets cast making it lighter and keeping costs down. Hold the wax up to the light to gauge where to hollow it out. The light blue bits will be thin whereas the darker blue bits will be thicker. Smooth the rough lines as much as possible for evenness.

8. We need to now smooth the surface of the wax. You can do this in a number of ways. I start by lightly brushing a fibreglass eraser over the surface to get rid of scratches and lines. Then I use a very light grade sandpaper. Lastly, I go over my wax with white spirit. Don’t rub to much though as it wears away the wax.

9. At this point, when your surface is nice and shiny and the back of the base relief has been hollowed, start adding the details. I used a hot wax worker to melt dots of wax shavings on to the top of the mushroom. I added a small amount of detail to the top of the stem and under the mushroom’s cap too. I then slightly filed over the cap again (when wax has been melted and cooled it becomes a lot harder so you will have to file it a bit more forcefully than normal) Add talc with a fine brush and use magnification to see the details properly.

10. Once you have finished all your details and you are happy overall with the shape give it another smooth over with the fibreglass pen and make sure there is no paint, china marker or talc left. Add a circle of spool wax to the top of the cap by using the hot wax worker if you want to make it into a pendant. (note, I applied talc to show detail in the picture)

11. You should now have a wax pattern ready for casting.
Basic list of tools wax carving beginners

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Make these colourful and delicate butterflies to liven up your potted plants, a vase of flowers or stick them on a plain picture frame!
Materials needed;
White tissue paper
Flour
Bowl
Fork
Plastic plate
Silver plated wire, diameter 0.4mm
White cotton
Pliers
Selection of paint brushes
Watercolours
Scissors/scalpel
Greaseproof paper
Pencil
Masking tape
Small pritt stick foam pad or….
A wooden stick, small spring and glue gun
Old mustard jar
Modge Podge
Butterfly images

1. Select which butterfly you want to make by having a look around the net. This is a great site http://www.britishbutterflies.co.uk/ Try and pick an image which has a flat bird’s eye view of your as it will be easier when we start to draw it later on.

2. Next, mix the flour and luke warm water together in a bowl.

3. Now tear up pieces of the tissue paper and with a paint brush, spread some of the mixture onto your plastic plate and start layering your tissue on top of each other, flattening wrinkles with your brush. You can hold the plate up to a light to see the overall thickness. It should be a couple of layers thick at least. Leave to completely dry.

4. Whilst waiting for your paper to dry we can make the body. Cut some wire with your pliers roughly twice the length of the butterfly’s body in your reference picture. Double over and twist the wire with your pliers, making a little loop at both ends. Triple knot cotton thread into one of the loop and start wrapping it around the wire until you have a shape that resembles a body. Fasten and dip the entire body into the flour/water mixture and leave to dry.

5. Now we can start to draw our outline image to transfer onto the paper. As butterflies are symmetrical, tracing would give better results than freehand drawing. So to do this, take a small square of greaseproof paper trace the butterfly you have chosen. A light box is really handy for this but a glass lamp would also work well. When you have drawn all the details, turn the greaseproof paper over and go over the lines.

6. When your paper I completely dry, peel it off the plate. Secure the greaseproof paper with small bits of masking tape onto the paper and go over all the lines once more. Remove the greaseproof paper and you should have a faint image of your butterfly. Go over the outline again if needed.

7. Start to cut your butterfly out, either by using scissors or a scalpel, depending on the wings edges.

8. In my tutorial pictures, you can see that I started painting the butterfly when I hadn’t attached the body. This is because I was watching the 6 nations at the time and had a temporary lapse in concentration!
Before you start painting you can secure the body with Modge Podge and dab the flour mixture between the body and wings. Leave it to dry for a couple of minutes.

9. Start painting! I paint the main base colour first, then add the other little blocks of colour and then move onto the detail. Try not to over clog your brush with excess water as it will curl the paper edges. If the edges do curl though, it can be fixed with dabbing on glue and pressing it down for a couple of seconds

10. When you have decided that everything looks good and your happy with the butterfly you can either seal it with Modge Podge or leave it as it is, depending on what you want to do with it. If it will be going anywhere near water, like a vase of flowers, then sealing it would be a good idea.

11. If you want your butterfly to liven up a plain picture frame, just get a small sticky foam pad or even blue tac and…well….stick it on.
If you want it on a stick for a plant pot, just attach the spring to the stick, making sure its secure and glue the butterfly onto the spring using a glue gun. And there you go….your all done!

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