I had allready visited to the crafting store twice after the initial shopping trip to stock up on the wood and on superglue. The third trip I took there was to get more modeling clay for making roof tiles. Here are the tools I used for making the roof tiles. Knife for cutting, ruler for measuring obviously, jar as a rolling pin and glass sheet as a workbase.
Originally I had bought two packages of FIMO modeling clay, I was certain that would be way enought, but I couldn't have been more wrong. Then I made the mistake of mixing two colours, black and brown, I wanted dark brown roof tiles.
While I was mixing the first batch I noticed the mixing was lot of work. It was lot more burdensome than I had thought. The colour was fine though at that point, but when the roof tiles hardened in the oven they turned allmost black. I had been to so much trouble and then the end result was almost black anyway. Now I had done the first batch and did not want to start over so I needed to make the following batches equal. Also I noticed that from two packages of modeling clay I was able to make one fourth of the roof. Only one fourth!
Well I had started making the tiles like that and I was not going to back out now. So mixed up the next three batches of the clay, cut the straight tiles and hardened them in the oven. This took several evenings. Then I made arched tiles to go in between the straight tiles, I used my roof tile cutter with great success.
I draw a form for the arched tile on paper and formed the tiles on top of it, so I could get the tiles somewhat uniform.
Then I baked the arched tiles too. And here is how my roof tile factory worked like for many many days and I don't think the plastic smell is ever going to leave from the oven. Stay tuned for the tiling of the roof maybe next week.
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This post belongs to the series of posts for the I'm a Giant challenge by Emily Henderson. All my posts about the challenge can be found behing this link.
Wow, what a lot of work -- but what a fantastic roof it's going to be!
ReplyDeleteahhh you are so brave! I applaud your efforts, the results are looking pretty good already! Don't worry, the advantage of FIMO is that you can also paint on it (acrylics) although a dark base is a little hard to paint on...but i think if you stipple it with a little grey, then maybe a little terracotta colour, you might get back some brown? i hope i make sense, the grey will act something like a primer, but also make it like a 'dirty' roof...
ReplyDeleteGOOD JOB! yes mixing the clay is hard work T-T have you considerd using lightweight paper clay? it's much lighter and doesn't require baking. Some people use DAS brand but i think it is quite heavy....
oops i might have talked too much, as you probably can tell, i have a passion for polymer clay ;)
p.s. i get a feeling you might have overbaked the clay, judging from the description (darker, plastic smell), especially if you used a toaster oven...alot of ovens even with temperature gauges are not accurate, you would need a thermometer to make sure your clay is baked correctly.
ReplyDeleteThank you scb and Snowfern.
ReplyDeleteSnowfern thank you especially for the great tips. Polymer clay is very new material for me so I appreciate all info I can get. I might not incorporate any of your tips on the teahouse though, since I've allready done and glued on most of the tiles. Despite all the difficulties I've had I still like the material a lot and I'm sure I'm going to use it again in some other project.
Oh my. I am anxiously waiting to see your roof--even if you aren't finished yet.
ReplyDelete