 Hi, I'm Malika Portschwad. Today I would like to share some of the hints and tips that I've been using for the past 20 years in making clay flowers. Before I start with my program, I would like to introduce all the gadgets and the clay that I use for making the flowers. The first thing I would like to talk to you about is the clay, which is Thai clay. You can buy this modern clay, that's only a brand name. The basic ingredient is Thai clay. That's the most important thing that you require for making clay flowers. The second thing is a nice board, preferably a non-stick board and a rolling pin, which is also non-stick, that will help you to make roll out thin petals. Then you would like to have a nice spatula, a nice palette knife, you can call it, just to take out your petals out from your surface. A small tool, a rolling pin like this, which is to lift up the petals, a painting brush to use for your glue, white glue to stick the petals, and this is the waning tool which you use to wane your petals. This is a small pair of scissors, which is really pointed because you have to cut into the throat of the flower, so you have to cut it there. This is a ball steel ball tool, which is really good for rolling out or frilling the petals, especially when it is clay, steel ball tool is more ideal. This is again a frilling tool which has got grooves inside which helps you to pick up all the fine details of the flower. Then we have the cutters, different type of cutters, this is for the calyx, this is for the rose leaves, this is for the rose petals, then we need a cutting plier, sticking tape, flower step, that is all about it, and then some of the tips I will introduce as I go on with my job. Today I am going to show you how to make a rose, a rose with its buds and the leaves and whatever is there. I forgot to mention something, you need a folding folder like this, that is to put your petals inside and keep it covered so that your petals doesn't dry out. If it is dry you cannot roll them out thin, so that is another thing which is very important. To start with, I have to take my dough, this dough is air drying, air hardening clay, so it is so important that you cover everything with a tight cling film like this, roll it up tight so that it doesn't dry. Once it is dry it is practically useless, you cannot do anything with it. Now I have this clay, white clay, into which I have already mixed pink oil paints. We use oil paints to mix into this clay, you can also use acrylic paints but it tends to dry faster than oil paints, so I prefer personally oil paints to get mixed into this clay. Before you mix any color, it is very important to mix a little bit of white into the dough, because the white is what makes your petal opaque. It is very important to mix white into the dough, if you don't mix white and you directly add the color you will get a translucent effect which will not make your flower look natural. This is quite opaque just because I have added white into it, so that is an important point which you should remember. Now I am going to start with my flowers, so for the rose you have to mix two shades, you can even go with three shades darkest, lighter and the lightest. But I am only using two shades here, one is darker than the other. So first I am going to roll out your light, your light dough, I am just going to roll out this into a thin, as thin as possible, fairly thin. See I am rolling it out, it doesn't stick because both are non-stick, I am using non-stick roller and rolling pin. So now these are the rose cutters, just a circle, and there are two sizes, I am going to use the largest size for the lighter petals. You need about 10 of these, but right now I am going to show you two, because there is not much time, so I will be demonstrating two petals how you have to go about processing that. So you need something like a mouse pad or a small sponge or something which has got a cushion effect and then you take your ball tool and just go on the edge of the petal like this. So you will see that, it is curving a little bit, it is giving a natural, wavy effect to this. Once you do this, you have to pull it out a little bit. Holding one end little, you just leave a small portion undisturbed. Pick it up, you can also roll in your palm. Once you get this, you have to take either toothpick or something and give curls, curl your petal to the sides to make it look like a natural, or the three sides or two sides. You get a shape of a rose petal. And this, what I do is, that is what some of the tips that you can understand, I mean you should follow. I use a painting palette and I leave them to dry in this. I have already done a few for you all and this is almost semi-dry, so I place it in this. So I get the cup there. When it is dry, we get a beautiful cup there. If you leave it on a flat surface, it is going to be flat and your rose will not look good. So you have to have this. So that is ready already. So now, once you get ten of those petals, you are going to roll out the darker color. So we need to have a slight contrast between the two colors. Let me kiss in this dark one. Take the dark one and here you have to roll out six petals and be the small cutter. I use the big one for the lighter one and I am keeping it away and I am going to use my dark shade. I am going to roll it out thin. See, more I need your help please. So just roll it out fairly thin as I had been doing the previous one. Once you do this, take the small cutter and cut out six out of these. I may not get the sixth one. So this is the time when you need to use this folder. To prevent this from drying, we pass all these things into the folder and we use this thing, the palette knife to put your things inside. We start working with one, but I need six. We need six of those. So I got five. I am going to roll it out again. In the rest of the dough, you have to keep it back into this airtight cling film. If it dries as I told you, it will become quite useless though you can make dry buds for the rose. Now, after getting this much, you have to process this again with the ball tool and I am going to make the edges. Fill the edges a little bit. You can see the shape, the edge is getting softer and it is giving a natural wave effect. This time you don't have to curl the petals. You just have to. The weather is quite humid, so I can afford to keep them outside for some time. Roll out the petals this way. Take the next one. Especially when you are working, there should be no harsh or air coming onto your surface, like under the fan, for example. This is not good for air drying clothes. So especially this thick layer tends to dry very hard. You can see the finish flower is really hard. So that's what you should remember. And rose doesn't come so good when you do it for the first time. So not to worry, make 10 roses. The lemon throne will be the perfect master. So keep doing. So now I have done all my six petals. The edge should be very thin to make it look realistic. So just do that. So all the six petals are done. Now I have to apply glue for the first one all over the petal. The second one three fourth, then almost everything three fourth. Except the first one where I am going to put all over. So we have to take a little bit of glue. Little bit glue is here. And this is the white glue and brush. And the thinner edges on top and I am going to brush on the all over this. And one most important thing about this is the way you have to put the glue. The thick part is done where I have not flattened. Put the glue all over. Just a little bit glue. You don't have to smear a lot of glue. And then here you have a bud. The one important thing as I told you, the bud of the rose has to be done a day earlier, like 24 hours in advance. So that it is hard and you can knock like this. So you have to do this soft while you assemble the rose as it tends to become heavy on adding petals. The whole thing can fall down. The wire can fall down. So to avoid that, you should always have the bud totally dry. It can be any color because we are going to cover it up with the petals. So now my first petal, I am going to place the bud. A little lower than the petal like this. For the petal, and I am going to close it very, very tight. Very tight. This is very important and then I am going to close the top also very tight. I am not bothered about the bottom of the bud, but the most important is the top part. I am sorry, I am not aware of my specs on. So now all the petals are glued and then I am going to put the second one, which will come opposite to this. Opposite your joint where you join the petal. And then I did that. Now every joint here, I will be putting another petal. With following the same height, the height, I am not going to change. The height, I mean the top part of the flower will remain the same. The height of this spot and then I will be joining one by one like this. Now there is a joint here and this is where I am going to add my next petal. So that will come here and I am going to join here. Never join both together, it is not going to give you a good effect. So join one side first, then go on to the next one. Take the next one, I put one on this joint. Then the last one of the dark color of the smaller petals. This is the last one of the smaller petals, which I am going to cover it up. So now I am done with the inner world of the rose. And if you just want to make a tight close bud, this is enough, you can put the calyx and finish the job. But we are going to make a full blown rose, so we need to add more petals. So here is where you are using your second layer, which is partially dry. So it retains the cup that you have here. So now again back to here, you just show you the blowing process here. You just start to put very little glue, like a semi circle at the base. And then I will be putting this, just below this, wherever you need to stick, just add glue there. See that your fold is intact, the curve that you have done there. And then you put the... And when you add the second world, see that you don't press this part of the flower. The moment you press this part of the flower, it is going to gather together, which will make the flower look very unnatural. So just see that you just give pressure at the base and only on the base. So now you have to put glue for these petals only on the base and keep going. I am sticking it. Now we got a little larger, but if you want to stop at this stage, you can stop by adding your calics. But I am continuing, because as I said, I am making a full blown rose, so you have to keep adding the petals. Just on the base, keep going. It is really nice to have a good assistant, so you get perfect roses. Because all we have to do is just assemble. So I am introducing SEMA, SEMA, who is standing by my side, a very good student of mine. It is very simple, because everything is all the curves and the curves and the bend and everything is already done on my palette. That will be your end result. If you want a bigger rose, you have to use larger circles. And if you want smaller rose, use this. Still tiny ones, you have to use tiny circles. Now it is not done. We have to dress her up. We have to put calics at the base to make the rose look complete. For that, we have to mix green oil paint, especially you have to use some sap green. The color is sap green that I use for the leaves and also for the calics. So now I am going to roll out a little bit green, which is already mixed. And you have the leaf cutter with the Venus. Venus already there, it is called planja cutters. You just have to cut it and that is it. Roll it out thin again as thin as possible again. Now I am going to cut out the calics at the base. And I am going to cut out that. You press on the edges. So that it cuts out fine. And then you have to cut out the leaves along with it. You have to press the leaf, the planja and then you can take it out. So you get the veins along with the... So the leaves, it gets its own veins. The vein is already done. And I am just cutting a few. As soon as you finish, especially after adding the green pigments or any dark pigment or the paint, it tends to dry faster than the normal white one. So you have to keep it covered. Spend some time doing this. Don't be in a haste and just show it into a bag. Do this, then go on to your next job. So now I am taking out this. This is quite thick. So it will not look very natural. So what we do is, we just elongate this with the help of the ball tool. And also make the sides a little bit thin. This is very important. All the colors that you mix in your dough, tends to become darker when it is dry. At that point you should bear in mind. If you want a very light pink, you have to just add a little bit. Because what you see after mixing is not the color, it will be one shade darker. Whichever color you mix, it will be one shade darker. So mix a shade lighter than what you need. Yeah, that's done. So that's done. It's elongated and a little bit thin. Now you have to pick this up and make it look a little more natural. You can just give small cuts, strands like this. If you don't do it's fine, but it will look better when you have that. Because some of the roses have that. So go along with that and keep doing that for all, just like this. The small strands, what I've got, you have to do it. So I've already prepared one here. I've done this already with the strands. These are ready calics. I'm taking the prepared rose and I have to just glue, let's learn the base. I'll put a small ball of dough here to give a small hip for the rose. Small hip. It's like this. And then I'll be using my calics. You don't have to put on the fine strands that we have cut. You have to just put on the middle of each sepule. Each sepule here. And pass the rose through this covering the hip that we have prepared. Let's take it. Give little pressure on this. So you get a small hip for the rose. Going round. Now it's almost, it's fully dressed now. Yeah, it's nice. It smells like a rose now. Now you have to make some, the leaves that we have, we have to stick wires at the back. So we have very thin wires. I need these wires, I forgot to bring the next one. These wires. And then we stick it on the wrong side and then we run our nail on it. And that's the rose leaf. Which I've done here. If you use a bigger cutter, you get the bigger leaves. And I'll just touch a little bit pink paint on the sides of these leaves. That's optional. If you want, you can do it or you could leave it just as it is. So that's the leaf. And I'll show you one bud. For the bud, we need the same pink. Because our rose is pink. Take a small bowl. So this is the bud that you make for the rose. Which I do not show you when I make the rose. But you can watch it now. Take a 22 gauge wire. Bend the edge. You should always make a hook when you pass on any kind of... That will be hard. You need help for this. Okay. You need to make a hook like this. Which is very important because if you don't do this, it can just fall off. The bud is just a small bowl which you shape it into a tear drop like this. And you should dip it in the glue, this hook part. And I pass it to the flat side of the tear drop right up to the top. Then I reshape it again. Because if your shape has gone, just shape it up again. So this is the bud which you need for the rose as well. This should be done 24 hours in advance as I told you. And always remember to make a hook. The hook prevents this from falling. Once you get this, you can take your calyx. Again you need a small hip here which you can pull from here. Then you put your glue. It's good if you can make these small cuts on the edge. But it's not so important but it's good if you can do it. It will look better. So you pass this and cover the hip. First give pressure on the hip and then you join this. So you get the bud for the rose. This is just the plain leaf what I made. Here I just touched a little bit of red paint. That's optional but if you do I think it will be a little more dramatic. That's up to you. And we have the rose here. You can attach the bud to the rose. Put the leaves. You have the sticky tape. But even if it's sticky I just start with a little bit of glue so that it is firm. And then you just take your. You could put this on top or this on the side. I'm putting it a little below. And you twist your tape. You make lots of. You could also cover the stems with the clay. I don't think I have one. You could also cover with clay but it's not necessary because it is not going to be shown that much. Unless you're putting a single one. This is the final. What I've done today, the final part of the rose. I've attached two leaves. I've used three leaves in one stock. Or some of them have five. It's never like one leaf one leaf. It's not like that. On one stem you have three leaves. I've just arranged it like this. You could also make more buds like I've done on this. This is the first stage of the bud which I was explaining. This is a little more open bud. This is a smaller rose. A large rose. You could do that. You could also do these green buds. Or just a small teardrop shape I've taken and put the calyx and covering the whole thing. This is what I was saying. Covering with the clay. This I've covered with the clay. It's not the stem. I've taken the clay and just gone round like that. So we get a more natural effect to the stem. Otherwise you can just leave it like this. That's all about the rose. Hope you enjoyed the show. Thank you. Thank you.