Friday, August 12, 2011

Fun Crafting idea, Piggy Plant Pokes and Magnets Salt Dough







What You will need for this project:
4 cups of flour
2 cups of salt
water
acrylic paints
instant coffee
pop sticks or sticks of some form
hot glue gun
scraps of fabric
magnets
light weight sand paper
varnish
pig cookie cutter/or any animal cookie cutter

Mix the flour and salt and begin adding water to the mixture until it all forms together like making bread dough. If it gets too most just add a little flour. You want the dough to roll out on a lightly floured surface as if making cookies. Take a small amount now and roll it out onto the floured surface. Roll the dough out to about 1/2 thickness, you want them sturdy, or a just little more than 1/2.
Now take your animal (pig) cookie cutter and cut out the pig. I would take just a small amount of dough and cut out one at a time just to make sure I was consistent with the thickness of each one. Once you have them cut out and placed on the lightly greased cookie sheet take your pop stick or stick and slightly press in the center between the legs, making this dent will make it easier to hot glue the stick into place.

Now lightly grease large cookie sheet and add the animals (pigs) bake in your oven at 150/ 200 degrees, which mine baked slowly the entire day, drying the dough out. The drying will/should take most of the day, you can also just let them air dry, this will take a few days.
When the pigs are quite dry; take some light weight sand paper and lightly sand them a bit as to rough them up just a little.

Paint the pig with acrylic paints, I mixed up a bit of red and white for this one and then let it dry. I then added some dabs of yellow kind of forming small butterflies. Once that was dry I mixed up a table spoon of instant coffee and added a little water and brushed on the stain, to the pig, stick and scrap of fabric I had torn for the bow. Once that was completely dry I brushed on the varnish to seal everything, put a couple of dabs of hot glue in the dent and added the stick. I also hot glued the bow on. On the back of the pig you can add you magnet of choice, a heavy magnet is what I suggest with hot glue. This project takes a bit of time but it is fun to do. These pig pokes will look cute as an addition to any potted plant and help add to giving a plant as a gift or use them as magnets! I hope you have fun with this project!