Yet, the thought of decorating a cake can fill you with fear!

Cake Decorating Inspiration

Robin Hassett, cake decorating artist, of the Dessert Tray makes cake decorating with fondant look so simple and of course the finished product looks gorgeous!

If you fancy having some fun with fondant cake decorating, but haven’t given it a go yet then, just maybe, Robin’s video will inspire you to try it out.

Cake Decoration – Artist’s Gallery

Need a bit more cake decoration inspiration or ideas for creating your own style and finish, then check out Robin Hassett’s Decorated Cake Gallery

We’re not fond of fruit cake, so we usually have something chocolaty at Christmas. Rather than just making a chocolate cake, I think we’ll be trying our hand at decorating it with fondant – it does look like fun!

Are you already a fondant cake decorating expert?

If not, has Robin’s video and tips inspired you to give it a go?

Have fun

As the darker nights draw in and the rainy days become more frequent, it can be a struggle to keep the kids occupied and stimulated.

And, now that Christmas is coming round quickly, this is a great time for getting the kids involved in the Xmas preparations. Most kids do really enjoy making their own decorations.

This plaster of paris snowman Christmas decoration is an easy one for your kids to make.

Materials you’ll need:

• Plaster of Paris (p.o.p.)
• Water (measure as per p.o.p. instructions)
• Bowl for mixing
• Spatula or old spooon for mixing
• Snowman cake or jelly mould
• Fabric/Acrylic or poster paints and brushes

How To Make a Plaster of Paris Snowman Christmas Decoration

STEP ONE

Read the plaster of paris mixing instructions for actual quantities of p.o.p to water ratios.

• Place the water in your mixing bowl first
• Gradually add the measure of plaster of paris, being careful not to create dust

Supervision Required: (health warning: do not breath in any dust) If your kids are very young, you may prefer to do this part for them!

• Mix until any lumps gone & mixture smooth

STEP TWO

Once your plaster of paris mixture is smooth, have your snowman mould ready for the next step.

STEP THREE

Now it’s time to slowly pour your plaster of paris mixture into your mould.

• Pour slowly so you don’t create any air bubbles.
• Keep pouring until your mold is full

If you see air bubbles:
tap you mould lightly, and they will disappear.

Leave your filled mould to one side while the plaster of paris dries/sets.

• You can tell that the plaster of paris has set, as you’ll see that it has shrunk away from the sides slightly.

Once it has dried, you can tip your plaster of paris snowman out of your mould.

Your snowman is, once thoroughly dry, now ready to decorate.

STEP FOUR

Choose your preferred paints and colours to suit your Christmas theme.

Or simply let your kids use their own creative imagination for painting their own snowman.

They can get creative painting stripes or patterns on his scarf and hat… anything goes!

STEP FIVE

Continue painting until you are happy with your decoration.

Plaster of Paris is porous and will absorb water. You can seal your snowman Christmas ornament with a light spray of of varnish if you wish. Please follow instructions and spray outdoors or in well ventilated room, protecting any surfaces.

Kids Crafts Tutorial by Lalita Soloman

Lalita Solomon has worked for 25 years as art and craft teacher.

Her varied crafts include :

Painting, clay crafting, glass painting, Card making, Plate painting, Bread dough craft, Hand crafted beads, and table top fountain making.

He loves everything to do with product design and enjoys making some of the items he designs. This woodworking light project is just one of the product designs he has made.

As you can see from the photo on the left of the simple modern design, his light box is made from wood which he has left with a natural waxed and buffed finish. He likes seeing the natural wood, plus the joints he cut add design elements.

The light itself is inset into the box and when pressed to switch on, the lighting area raises above the box. When switched off, the light is recessed into the light box. There were a couple of technical aspects that he worked through to make this part of his design work.

With a little bit of adjustment to his woodworking plans and his design, he soon had those glitches ironed out. Pretty clever design if you ask me!

For his prototype, he added a perspect cover to the top of the light section in keeping with his modern design idea. Although he personally isn’t 100 percent satisfied with the overall finish of his craft work, it looks excellent to me.

Above is a photo of Ron’s submission to the SPIN, Silk Painters International, competition, which was deservedly awarded the winning entry. Ron’s ‘signature piece’ will be printed on all the posters, ads, and merchandise for the SPIN festival in Santa Fe, NM for July of 2012.

Artist – Ron Says:

“I’ve just been honored to have my recent silk painting chosen as the ‘Signature Piece’ for the SPIN (Silk Painters International) Festival to be held in Santa Fe, NM next year!

Many celebrated and skilled international artists contributed designs/paintings on silk for this contest.

I am delighted that my work was so recognized amongst all the entries and to share it with all of you!

Special ‘Thanks’ goes out to all of you who have commented and complimented on my work…I am in much appreciation.”

In addition, Ron has recently been interviewed by SPIN. His interview will be published in the next SPIN quarterly journal “The Silkworm”.

……all very exciting indeed!

I hope you’ll join us in congratulating Ron on his well deserved silk painting success – add your comments and congratulations below for Ron:-

Take…

• 1 cup of imagination
• 1 batch of salt dough
• 1 pot of paints

… mix together with your own creativity for hours of fun with the kids

We’ve compiled our Salt Dough Craft for Kids guide and added a few more tips and resources for you together in an ebook, Kindle format, for you to buy and download on Amazon.

Inside the ebook is your secret download password to use to access additional tips and resources.

Buy Now – Salt Dough Craft for Kids

You don’t need to own a Kindle, you can get a Free Kindle Reader for your computer here

Artist Lucian Freud Dies : photo clip courtesy BBC

Lucian Freud

Artist Lucian Freud was well known for his far from flattering portraits of his often famous sitters and for his true to life full flesh portrayals of the human form. He was not averse to portraying himself in the same light.

His nude paintings were not only popular, they sold for millions. The nude painting he did of model Kate Moss was sold in 2005, it went for millions!

Freud may no longer be with us, but his legacy will live on to inspire artists of the future.

View : Video of a collection of his works here – Freud BBC Video

I saw a TV interview of one of his nude models this morning. What was interesting to note was just how long Freud took to complete his paintings.

The hours of sitting this model endured, yet enjoyed, and the friendship element of Freuds relationship with her and his other sitters.

Of course many of his painting subjects were family members and close friends.

Pencil Drawing

Drawing in pencil is where most people start exploring their artistic skills. Pencil is still my favourite medium and being able to draw and sketch comes in very useful in most art projects.

You can achieve so much with the simple pencil, however, moving into portrait drawing can be a little daunting as you are actually trying to capture the true features of a real person!

Pencil Portrait Drawing with Christopher

How long have you been drawing pencil portraits?

• I have been drawing pencil portraits since I was in secondary school. I was a teen who didn’t know how to draw at all. I thought that drawing realistic portraits would be easy but it wasn’t.

How did you overcome those initial drawing challenges?

• I invested in several ‘how to draw’ books and courses that I thought would help me take my drawing skills further. I think I must have spent a small fortune in those early days!

Did the books help you improve your portrait drawing skills?

• Well, the theory of drawing was important for me, but I did find that most of the books I bought just showed nice-looking results of the artists work, which I did my best to copy. They were also full of descriptive text, which I found rather boring!

So how did you manage to develop your drawing skills?

• I essentially had to learn to draw pencil portraits on my own. After 6 months of struggling, I managed to understand the steps that you need to follow in order to draw nice realistic pencil portraits. Plus, with practice I improved my skills and my portrait drawing speed.

Why did you decide to teach others how to draw portraits?

• Over the years I came across many people who thought they couldn’t draw portraits for a variety of reasons. But as I’d already proven that it is possible to learn these skills, I set about sharing my drawing techniques with others.

• They soon discovered that they too could draw pencil portraits, so I developed my digital ebook “8 Easy Steps To Drawing A Portrait” and support materials to help more people create portraits.

Artist Details:

Christopher teaches beginners to create stunning pencil portrait drawings with his course “8 Easy Steps To Drawing A Portrait”

Christopher has a FREE E-Book that You Can Download Here to… “Discover the shading technique that I’ve been using to draw my portraits for years”.

I must admit I was rather excited to ‘volunteer’ when one of my artistic girls asked if she could draw my portrait. Knowing that she is already very good at capturing ‘the person’ in her drawings, I was expecting a flattering rendition!

How wrong can you be?

As you can see in her finished drawing of my portrait, it wasn’t a case of me having to sit still for an hour while she sketched away.

How To Make Portrait Drawing More of a Challenge

Oh no! There was no sitting still trying to look ‘as pretty as a picture’!

She had me pushing, pulling, distorting and squashing my face in all different directions to make the portrait more interesting and more of a challenge for her!

Well thank you very much, the things a Mum has to do to help, in the name of art!

Yes, of course I obliged, as you can far too clearly see.

Despite the fact that every wrinkle I’ve been hiding reasonably successfully for the past few years is clearly rendered, I think her Portrait Drawing of Mum is pretty darned good!

Next time she draws or paints my portrait, I’ll be asking her to be a little less detailed…

Have you ever had your portrait drawn?

A couple of Acrylic Paintings by my artistic girls.

Silk Painting Beginning

This first image is of a new silk Painting by Ron, at the work in progress stage :

For this silk painting Ron used:

• 12mm Habotai Silk – approx. 20″ x 30″
• Colored gutta’s (‘Resistad’ from New Zealand)
• French Dyes

Notes:

• A good quality Silk provides a quality base for painting on.
• French dyes are brilliant, versatile, and most of all, leave the fabric soft!
• Gutta comes in a variety of colours now and is used as a resist to ‘define’ different areas of the dyes painted onto the silk and stop one colour bleeding into another.

Ron used various gutta colours to outline his composition. Once dried, french dyes are painted into the spaces, painting much as you would if you were watercolour painting.

You can use a variety of painting techniques to achieve different colour blends. For example, using wet-on-wet to allow different hues of the flower colours to bleed and blend into each other.

Finished Silk Painting

In the finished silk painting you can see how the coloured gutta has blended in as part of the painting whilst other areas clearly define certain flowers in the composition.

‘FLORAL IN DELFT’ Silk Painting

I love this silk painting and it really is very well balanced and certainly reminds me of the Dutch Masters compositions and colours, which Ron tells me is exactly the finish he was aiming for with this silk painting.

Yet, it also has a very modern feel to it and will look perfect in either a traditional or modern setting.

One of the exciting qualities of silk painting is the purity and the intensity of color that you can achieve with this art technique.

Ron Gutman
Find more photos like this on Art Hobby Craft Creative Network Forum

About Ron Gutman

I have been in the arts my entire life. I have been a Performer, Graphic Artist, Display Designer, Textile/Fashion Designer, Costume Designer, Theatrical Set Designer and have gone thru a multitude of Crafts. Several various art/craft awards/prizes have been bestowed on me. Currently I have been very involved in Ceramics/Pottery and my latest venture…Clay Flowers.

I have a small studio in my home ‘STUDIO VII’ Decorative & Fired Arts and teach ceramics and clay flower making.

View More – Ron Gutman Art Work

I’ve been experimenting with paper clay ceramics for many years, it’s a medium I love to work with when I manage to find some of that elusive ‘spare time’ to indulge myself without having to stop to feed the kids etc!

There are many interesting aspects to paper clay, not least that you can experiment with the ‘paper to clay ratio’ to push the boundaries of the medium, with interesting, if sometimes unexpected, results that you can’t achieve with clay alone.

Some other useful facts about paper clay:

• All pottery and ceramic artists should use paper clay as a minimum for their slip when hand building pieces.
• It provides a much stronger joint seal.
• Paper Clay can be used to ‘rescue’ cracks or even breakages at virtually all stages.
• It is much stronger and easier to handle than normal clay bodies at the bone dry stage
• For kids crafts projects, paper clay can be modelled into their favourite character and just left to air dry, rather than be kiln fired, before being painted and varnished.
• It can be sawdust or pit fired if you don’t have access to a kiln

You’ve probably got the idea of how versatile it is for art and craft projects.. There really is so much you can do with it!

If you’d like to find out more about paper clay you can get my easy to use recipe in “How To Make Paper Clay” together with easy to follow instructions on how to make a plaster bat, which apart from a cheap clay, recycled paper, water and a bit of time, is the only other thing you’ll need to make your own and start experimenting!

Enjoy & have fun