Cold porcelain can be made at home with just a few simple ingredients and a bit of effort.  Refer to the link at the bottom of the page for the recipe and instructions. 

Hints for storing, and working with Cold Porcelain:

1. Always keep the cold porcelain sealed in a completely air tight bag. It is an air drying material, so must be kept sealed. It can also be kept in a sealed bag in the freezer.

2. Use of cold cream on your hands will help you in working with the cold porcelain. Don't use too much, just a bit is enough to keep the CP from sticking to your fingers.

3. If your CP begins to get a bit stiff or slightly dried out, you can add a bit of cold cream to reconstitute and soften it up. Not too much, and just a bit at a time, till the CP is workable and soft again.

4. If you make your own CP, and find that it is too sticky, then additional corn starch added in small amounts and worked in till the correct consistency will help. Conversely, if it is too stiff, add a bit of cold cream.

5. Cold porcelain needs no baking, and will air dry beautifully and quickly. Be sure to place your finished pieces in a safe place while drying so that nothing gets set on top of them... or to keep the cat from eating them.....

6. You can create much thinner petals with CP than with sculpey. They can be nearly translucent. Just make sure that you use cold cream on your finger tips so that you do not distort the shape of the petals after flattening, and you can make them as thin as you want.

 

Here are three pieces of cold porcelain that have already been colored.

The easiest way to get three coordinating colors is to make the dark color first, then lighten by adding white or in this case a bit of pale yellow. Then take the second color and to part of it, add more of a white color.

Cold porcelain is an air drying material, so no baking is necessary. It is also more transparent than polymer clays, so it is ideal for making very fine, thin petaled flowers and such.

Start with a very small piece of your darkest color cold porcelain. Roll into a small ball and then flatten into a tiny oval as shown here.

Hint: Try making a few roses larger shen starting out, to practice the technique, then move down to the small size when you have the hang of the process.
Roll the oval from one end to the other, forming the center of the rose.
Take another small ball of cold porcelain (I'll call it CP from now on) Flatten it out into a small pancake. You can flatten with your fingers, or use a round toothpick as shown here to flatten.

Place the circle around the outside of the rose center as shown.

You will continue to make and add petals in this manner till the rose is the appropriate size. Try to keep the petals thin, and when placing them. Keep the tops of the petals even with the top of the rose center.

As you add each petal, you will slightly overlap the previous petal.

Here is the rose center with three additional petals. Notice how the petals overlap each other slightly .

After the center and the first one or two petals, switch to the next lightest color of cold porcelain for a couple of petals.

My rose has a center and six petals here. Notice how I have now used all three shades of my CP, with the lightest shade being used for the outermost petals.

Here my rose has 8 petals. Don't get too hung up on counting, as each one you do will definitely turn out different.

Notice that as I am adding petals to the outside of the rose, I am gently folding the edges of the petals down slightly?? You can do this gently with your fingertip or use a toothpick to push the edge down into a curved petal.
Here is my finished rose. It has a center and 12 petals all together, beginning in the center with the darkest color and gradiating to the outer petals with the middle and then lightest shade. The entire width of this rose is about 1/4" across the widest part.

Here is the rose next to a toothpick so you have some idea of size.

 

You could also make your roses out of a single color and then brush some of the petals with powdered pastel chalks to give variation to the colors of the inner or outer petals.

 
To make a bud, all you need to do is go back to the first step, for the rose center. Make your oval a bit wider and roll it from end to end. Here is a bud stuck on the end of a pin.
Now, make a bit of green for leaves.

Then flatten the teardrop into a leaf. You can curl the tip of the leaf up or down, or curl the sides of the leaves up a bit for a more interesting look.

Here are my five roses, three buds in assorted sizes and a good quantity of leaves for use on my project

Place the pieces in a safe place and allow to air dry. Here in sunny California, overnight is plenty of drying time, as these pieces are so tiny and the petals are so thin.

The pieces will be fairly rigid when dry.

If necessary, when roses are completely dry, use an xacto knife to flatten the bottom side of the roses. (you only need to do this if they have a long pointed shape to the bottom. If you kept the bottom fairly flat or rounded when you made the rose, then no trimming is necessary. Beginners tend to make a long pointed bottom at first, but it is easily trimmed away after drying, so no worries.

 

TO TUTORIAL ON MAKING COLD PORCELAIN AT HOME

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