It's my busy crafting time of year again. Well, actually, it's only busy because I am a huge procrastinator. I was at a Farmers' Market today and wanted to bring some fall themed crafts. Last year for a Christmas Craft Show I made Winter Fixin's, which you can see
here. I thought it would be cute to make some Fall Fixin's. Really, that is just a new name for potpourri with neat things in it.
So, I went out and picked rose hips off the wild rose bushes that grow here. Usually I pull the long poky things off before I dry them. Then I bake them at low (170 deg) temperature for 1 - 2 hours. I learned that this is necessary, rather than letting them dry naturally. I let them just dry on their own a couple of years ago and made potpourri and put it in bags. When I went to use it, there were these little grubby type worms in the bag with the rose hips! Ew! I found that drying them in the oven kills these worms. You can see a bunch in the picture below.
I wanted to put little crows and pumpkins in these Fixins, so I pulled out a package of modeling clay I bought at the dollar store last year and made a bunch of each. This one package made enough crows and pumpkins to make 8 packages of Fixin's. That is 2 crows and 3 pumpkins in each package. To make the indentations on the pumpkins, I used scissors and just started at the top, pushing the scissors in the pumpkin and curving the scissors to indent all the way to the bottom and did this equally spaced around the pumpkin. I made the stem and then poked a hole in the pumpkin to stick it into. I let these air dry for 2 days and noticed they weren't completely dry yet, so I baked them on low temperature for about 1 hour. I painted the crows all black with a little grey dot on each side for eyes. I painted the pumpkins with "Americana" Honey Brown paint. I painted the stem with "Ceramcoat" English Yew Green. Then I mixed "Americana" Dark Chocolate paint with 2 parts water to make a wash and covered the entire pumpkin with it to grubby them up a bit. When all the clay figures were dry, I sprayed them with gloss clear acrylic spray paint.
I added some star anise, cinnamon sticks, cloves and pine cones to it and this is what I ended up with;
I Love it!!
And here is the packaging I made to sell it in. I found the crow clip art on our Microsoft Word Starter Edition clip art. I used 6.5"x6" zippered sandwich bags (which I found at the dollar store in boxes of 50) for the bags. I made sure to poke a hole through the bag where you can't see it to keep some air flow, just in case the clay isn't completely dry all the way through.
Here is a (blurry) close-up.
These turned out exactly as I had envisioned in my mind and I couldn't be any happier with the outcome.
