Craft tips and tutorial - What to do with your roses

Many of you might get some roses this valentine, and don't know what to do with it after a few days. It might already lost their freshness, but don't throw it away.

There are a few things you can do with your roses.
1. Dry the petals
Some of the petals might started to fall/loose. Collect them, dry them. The dry petal can be kept for years. Some people might suggest to put silica gel and and microwave. But i can't find silica gel, and just try to dry them without silica gel, and it works. Line the petals in kitchen paper, and microwave in Low/ defrost for 3 minutes. After 1 1/2 minutes you might want to check and flip the petals.

THe petals might change colour, mine turn to purplish, but still is beautiful. I've used some of the petals for scrapbooking, and keep the rest for future craft projects.


2. Dry the roses in whole
Most of my roses are still good and the petals are still strongly intact with the stems. So i decide to dry them in whole. To dry them, i just hang them upside down in an empty room in my house. The room has to be dry and dark. Hopefully it will dry in 2 weeks. I'll update after 2 weeks then.

craft tips and craft tutorials - snow globes

Material :
- old jam jar
- glitter and/or confetti
- pva glue
- polymer clay
- silicon


Instruction

- clean old jam bottle, remove any label
- Make small animal using clay, or buy some miniature
- glue the animal miniature or any other you want in the jar lid, make sure it's been properly glued to the base.
- put glitter and confetti inside the jar
- fill jar with water
- close the jar with the lid.
- test if the water leaks from the jar,
to make sure, glue the jar to the lid, or better use silicon to seal the lid.

A great idea for valentine :)

Craft tutorial - Home Made Air Dried Clay

Paperclay and polymer clay are very expensive and hard to find here in Indonesia. Then one day i found a book that teach me how to make cheap air dried clay, with texture similar to polymer clay.

Here are the recipes (equal to polymer clay 42gr block)

1. 10 grams of Corn Flour

2. 10 grams of Plain Flour

3. 10 grams of Tapioka Flour

4. 15 grams of PVA Glue

5. Benzoat for preservatives (can be found in cake supply)

6. Any kind of colouring

How to make

1. Combine all the flours and benzoat

2. Mix in PVA glue, then mix until pliable,

The amount of PVA glue can be varied, depend on the texture of the dough. You can always put on more PVA glue for softer clay texture

3. Take the amount of clay you want, and colour them, Keep the rest in airtight container, or i will just put them in zipped plastic.

Tips :

1. Don't make too many as they get dried quite easily

2. Finished product might shrink a little, and darker in colour, please bear in mind when you mix in the colour

3. A cheap and easy way to furnish is using a transparent nail enamel.

I don't have a picture of my creation yet, but i will surely post some later :)

Have fun

Make your own cros stitch pattern

Sometimes cross-stitch pattern can be very expensive. And sometime we just can't find the pattern we want. Worry no more, because now you can transform any picture you have into cross stitch.

Here are few website that offer image- cross-stitch pattern converting
http://www.darklilac.com/upload.jsp
http://www.x-stitch.info/
http://www.picturecraftwork.com/en/

Craft

Craft has been my passion for years. I've tried many different craft, from flower making, doll making, clay, jewelry making, ribbon embroidery, card making, scrapbooking and many more.

Now i live in Indonesia, and i found it very hard for me to find materials. Well making a craft store and craft library has been my dream, well maybe one day i'll make one, but until then. I will just sit here infront of my computer, finding craft tips and tutorial, and i will share them with you.