My first dinner/tea set..

… in all it’s wobbly glory!

Ok, so the set is far from perfect but it’s the first set I’ve done and I’m quite proud of it. I learned a LOT from it. Mainly, the following.

• Leaching clay helps a great deal when doing small details. I should have gone for Fimo Classic straight away but leaching makes Fimo Soft a lot easier to work with. I read that it makes the baked product weaker but I haven’t noticed a big difference.
• First I tried to use a dowel to try and shape the teacups. But once i got the talcum powder on the dowel and tried to shape it around the dowel, it kept sticking to my fingers on the outside and flaring up. Also, once the clay has talc on it, you can’t reshape it. So, I tried the method of rolling the clay into a small log and putting a pin in and gently rolling it on the surface to make a cavity. (Illustrated here.)I still have problesm with getting the top of the cup even all the way around but making the cavity is much easier now.
• When making the bowls, the easiest way to make them bowl up is to put a small round of extra clay at the bottom of the bowl and then press the dowel into the top. This make a nice flat bottom and it makes the sides of the bowl come up nicely too. (I’ll try and get pictures of this next time I do it.)
• When doing the handles for the teacups, I think it’s far better to bake the cups first and then add the handles with some liquid polymer clay. I didn’t do it this time but that was what made teacups get distorted the most.

I still don’t know how to get a nice flared edge for the sugar bowl. I will work on that.