Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Little People Everywhere

I admit it, I have a new addiction.
In fact, I've had a lot of new craft addictions this year, it's been lots of fun!
But this week's focus is little people. I love little people - fairies, elves, tree spirits, leprechauns, some of my best childhood memories revolve around stories about small folk. Which is why I'm so taken with the face push moulds and clay I ordered last week. I sucked Meshell into sitting down with me for a few hours this afternoon (didn't take much persuading!) and we had lots of fun mixing clay colours and making moulded faces.


Aren't they just the coolest thing! I bought aqua, gold, copper coloured polymer clay, and Meshell discovered that the gold and aqua together produced the most gorgeous green that has a beautiful lustre. I'm sure she'll do a blog post of her own collection of little faces soon.


I also bought a granite looking clay, but I'm not so happy with that as the flecks in it are actually glitter, and the sparkle doesn't really appeal to me. I ended up rolling a bit of aqua through one and a bit of copper through another which I'm happier with, but in general I like a more subdued colour look. To be honest I'm just busting to run amok and order heaps more clay, and the other two packs of face moulds (this range is by Maureen Carlson) - trying to control myself for a little while at least!


I'm very taken with the idea of moulding just a part of the face, I can picture a textile forest scene with parts of faces peeping through. I've only just noticed that this partial face still has cornflour on it, which I dusted on the mould to stop the clay sticking. Hope it washes off! A couple of the clays are Fimo and a couple are Premo, and the Premo I found sticks to the mould a lot more, being a clay that gets much softer when it warms up. Speaking of faces and trees, have you seen Jo's Tree Spirit Doll - it's wonderful!


Using beads for eyes gives a totally different look too, and if you carefully rotate the beads a little then it makes the face look like it's watching something off to the side. Although my main intent is to use these faces with embroidery or wool felt, I have this slightly insane idea to surreptitiously glue one or two of these little darlings around the house, to be found by surprise. We have a lot of dark red face brick in our house, couldn't you just see the face above in repose somewhere, silently watching. :-)

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

love faces, love these. great!

Magpie Sue said...

Oooo, I just love these faces! Especially the partial faces. I think having a few stuck in and around the house would be way cool. (I have a little ceramic gargoyle hanging on a wall in an unexpected place in my home.) I'm a little jealous of those of you who can work with these polymer clays. I'm afraid to go anywhere near raw materials of that sort due to my chemical sensitivities. Play on!

Papoosue said...

These are fantastic - I think that is a great idea to have them stuck here and there around the house!

Fel said...

They look great! I agree about the subdued tones, they look much better than the sparkly ones...
I think sticking some of them around the house would be great...as would be a forest scene wall hanging or something. Just imagine...running wild with various stitches, using some selfspun yarn, including half-moulded faces...I think it sounds exciting! :D

Kate North said...

They are so fantastic - don't suppose you're looking to rehome any of them somewhere across the wide world... :)

Liz Needle said...

Those faces are just fabulous, Dy. What fun. They would be great for my kids at school. Must talk to you some more about them. Thanks for sharing them.

Liz

Anonymous said...

they are fantastic faces and parts of faces i just love them and the colours to bits... happy day margie

Dianne said...

What a wonderful array of faces - I really love the one-eyed faces - they're great, a bit spooky, but great!!!