I made these last July for the kids, but I kept putting off editing the video because I hate voiceovers. It was a nice experiment, but given how slow my computer is, I think I’ll just go back to blogging my projects. Anyway, I didn’t take photos of the process, but photos of the finished projects are shown below the videos.

Here they are. These took me a few weeks to make. The Chipmunk’s one was the easiest. He wanted his to match his Space and Trains box. The gradient took longer than I expected, but after that it was just a case of gluing.

B said he liked the idea of a sky box with rainbows (rainbow is his favourite colour), but he was really adamant that he wanted plants on it. I don’t know why. At first I couldn’t think how to incorporate plants into a sky theme, but in the end this is what I came up with. The clouds and the big rainbow at the back I made from air-dry clay, which I absolutely love. The glossy rainbow was a ready made deco his mum gave him.

Tiny’s was the hardest. My original design was going to be to paint it pink, with a gradient to a hotter pink near the bottom, and then decorate it with flatback gems and other shinies. But when I started painting the chest pink, the paint reminded me so much of pink buttercream. So I wont out to The Works (I still have some gift card money left), got a pack of DAS air-dry clay (I used my loyalty points too, so it was about £2.50 I think), and had a go. See the video for how many times I failed! In the end though, I was really happy with how it came out, given how little experience I have with sculpting.

Needless to say, Tiny has already scribbled over it with felt-tip, broken the cherry (I glued it back) and broken the hinges (the hinges were my fault, though. I should have just painted over them instead of taking them out). The gloss varnish was a mistake, as it just attracts dust that’s hard to remove. Apart from the rainbow and the gems, all the other deco was hand-made with the clay. I should have moulded the whipped cream directly onto the top of the chest, and the cherry directly on the whipped cream, instead of gluing them on after they were painted.

I also made a few other things for the kids using the clay.

I really like the cinnamon ring the best. Painting it stumped me for a bit, as I wasn’t sure how to get the cinnamon filling in. But in the end, I painted the pastry and did the shading. Once that was fully dry, I painted a thick layer of brown paint over the top, making sure it went right into the crevices, then quickly wiped off the excess with paper towels. I think I should make more of these treats before the clay ends up drying out!