Cold Porcelain Creations

Over the weekend my daughter was feeling a little bored...no friends to visit and raining. So I made up a batch of Cold Porcelain and here are our creations. This is only the second time we have used cold porcelain or rather first for me. As my daughter and her friend got in and used up the first batch last month. I made the little red creatures and the multi coloured buttons. My daughter is way more clever and created the cutest rabbit, alien with lots of eyes and a lollypop that will be added to a key chain.

Great instructions and photos here at Craftstylish

This is the recipe we use:

3/4 cup white glue (PVA)

1/2 cup water
1 teaspoon cold cream (I use Black and Gold Sorbelene Cream)
1 teaspoon glycerin
1 cup cornflour, plus additional for dusting your hands

1/2 teaspoon citric acid (apparently prevents mould)

Before placing on heat combine all the ingredients in the saucepan I then cook this on the stove at a moderate heat. Stirring continuously until all the mixture combines and leaves the sides and bottom of the pan.

Now I turn out the mixture on to a sheet of baking paper covered in cornflour. Take care as the mixture is very hot. You could leave to cool a little by covering it with a damp cloth. But I keep going and kneed the dough the best I can with the heat. Knead until smooth and white. Apparently, the hotter you can handle and knead the paste the better results. Once cool, wrap in cling wrap before placing in a sealed container. Do not store in the Fridge.

You can leave the dough mixture as it is and it will dry an opaque colour as you can see in the white sections of the Alien with many eyes. Or you can add colour. The first batch the girls added colour with water based paints. Yesterday, I had a try with my oil based paints and I think this may have dried the mixture a little. Just add a daub of the colour you want to a small section and knead the colour in. Half way through doing the colours my daughter reminded me that last time I had them kneading in white first and then adding colour as I had read on the net that this makes the dough hold the colour more. So the red, green and yellow above are straight colours. The red and brown I added white first then the colour.

It takes approx a week but everything dries rock hard and does shrink a little.

My weather report for the weekend. :-)

Well we had cyclone Neville last week who ran out of puff very quickly and just started the wet season for us. Then on the weekend we had Olga with a bit more behind her. Saturday morning we had good rain and it was breezy but by the arvo it was dying down. Olga spent a lot of time heading towards Cooktown about 285km north or us. She was a Catergory 2 for sometime but then as she got close to the coast turned into a Cat 1 and then back into a low.

We were awoken this morning at 4am with a huge clap of thunder and realised that the power was out. The thunder which stayed for about 1/2 hour was that impressive it was rattling the windows in our lounge room. I have just been for a walk and not only was there a sort of peaceful quiteness and birds chirping there were generators humming. Thankfully, as I got back to our place at 6.45am the power came back on.

Just had a look at the Weather chart to see what ex Cyclone Olga is up to and it was her that was causing all the noise here at 4am. She has come back down the coast as a low and crossed over just about where we are and is now on the Atherton Tablelands.

So now we are probably in for a very humid day. No rain at the moment but very grey skies. And that is the end of my weather report.