Handmade: Woodland Leaf and Mushroom Soap Dish

Where have I been? Ahhh! I’ve missed this blog and my Facebook page so much during these past two months. Well, there’s been a lot happening for me and the biggest change is that I’ve moved country. It has been two incredibly busy months and I’m now in Canada! Yay!
Boyfriendlovlie and I left Ireland last month and made it to Quebec in the beginning of November. It has been quite a change from Europe. But we really like it so far. We have already been blessed by 12 – 15 cm of snow! Here’s what I can see from my window at the moment.

So far, we are settling in okay. We have yet to see how our first winter in Canada goes through. We have been busy finding a place to live, initially, then finding some furniture and furnishings. Now things are smoothing out and I hope to be back posting more regularly.

Needless to say that I’ve already been around health shops and ‘sniffing’ around for vegan friendly places! Still getting used to some new ingredients and tastes. All in all, it is really quite fun to discover new things all over again.

With all the excitement of the move, I’ve been feeling really creative these days: crochet projects and crafty stuffs. And so, I went along and had a go at playing with air dry clay again. This time I though of trying something different to jewellery: a soap dish.

We needed a soap dish for the bathroom and a generic one from the stores wasn’t quite appealing. A handmade one was much more inviting and I’m glad I made this soap dish as it added a lot more flair to the wash basin in the bathroom. The enchanted world has always attracted me; everything woodland will always catch my attention. So, I went with this Leaf and Mushroom theme.

Here’s a few working shots.

I started cutting out the shapes in clay and affixed a skeleton leaf to the bottom one. Also rolled out fat snakes for the mushroom stems that I tucked underneath the leaves.

After drying (1 day later), I painted the leaves and mushroom with acrylic paint.

Then, I glued the skeleton leaves in place.

I glued the mushroom heads on the stems.

Here’s a top view. All done and left to dry.

I then applied a 2-part resin mixture to make it waterproof. I left it to dry for 2 days, then applied resin onto the under side as well and left it to dry for another 2 days.

Boyfriendlovlie had to photograph this outside on the pebbles. I am pretty pleased with how it turned out.

Now the soap laid on this dish feels like fairy magic.

So, what do you think?
Stay tuned, I’ll be back for more and more updates on my new adventures in food, jewellery and crafts!