A customer that bought some gnomes mentioned that she had made a wedding themed fairy garden as a wedding gift, and I thought, "Of course! Bride and groom gnomes. How obvious!" So I started making them the very next day. I thought I'd take some photos of the process to show you. I work on a piece of marble tile I got at the hardware store. First I condition the clay by kneading it till its nice and stretchy and smooth. (Sometimes I can get my husband to help me with this part.) Then I weigh out pieces for the heads, bodies, hats, and beards. I use a small kitchen scale. The bodies and hats are 6 grams each, and the heads and beards are 3 grams each. This gives me a standard size.
I have a small manual pasta machine that I use to roll out the clay for flat things like clothes.
See that round silver thing on the right? My husband built it to my specifications for my gnomes. He drilled holes in it for the toothpick to stick down through from the base of the gnome. Then I put the whole thing in my portable convection oven. (I love that thing!) I keep it out in the garage because baking polymer clay does smell a bit. That little pink piece of paper in the picture below is my template for the lady gnome's hair. I make paper templates for everything to save myself a lot of time and stress, and to make everything standardized.
Here they are, ready to go in the oven. I bake gnomes at 275 degrees for 45 minutes. You can't really see it in the picture, but when I am going to put a ribbon on her hat, I stick a tiny jewelry finding with an eye on it into the tip of her hat. I don't know what it's called. It looks like a pin, but with an eye instead of a head.
After baking, I use Mod Podge to glue on the glitter, paint her cheeks pink, and glue on the rhinestone.
I don't make them until they are ordered, so I can customize as much as you want! It's actually more fun for me to do so.
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