Ozark Pagan Mamma

Years ago I used to make goddess figurines and such with plasticized clay (like fimo or sculpey). This time around getting into crafting again, I don’t really have much of a budget for craft supplies. I also don’t like the idea of the permanence (plasticized clay is non-bio-degradable) and the artificial feel. (I don’t know if they still have them, but there used to be a warning label on the packages of some brands that said they could possibly cause cancer.)

Since I don’t have access to cheap clay, nor a kiln to fire it in, salt dough came to mind as a cheap and natural alternative. At first I thought it wouldn’t be strong and durable enough to make things to hang on the wall and last a while, but then I remembered a special recipe I had jotted down from a library book (sorry, I don’t remember the title). The book called the recipe “alum dough”. It’s a salt dough recipe with less than the usual amount of flour (1 cup instead of 2), and some alum thrown in. I call it “Strong Salt Dough”.

Strong Salt Dough
1 cup flour
1 cup salt
1 teaspoon alum
½ cup water
Mix dry ingredients. (Alum can be found in the baking isle with the spices.) Add water. Stir and knead until well-mixed. This dough has a coarser texture than regular salt dough, because of the 1:1 salt to four ratio. For best results, air dry after forming into desired shape. (I’ve tried baking this kind of dough; it puffed out a lot and browned on top.) If you do want to try oven drying, test it out on a little unformed lump of dough first at 200 degrees F or less.

When completely dry, this dough is pretty strong. I’ve made wall plaques from it, poked a hole in the back with a tack before drying (for hanging), and they stay on the wall. I’m sure some day, the things I’ve made with this kind of salt dough will deteriorate, but that’s a good thing.

The kinds of tools I use for working with the dough are a pizza-cutter (sometimes using a knife will pull and drag the dough instead of making a clean cut), toothpicks, skewers, rolling pin, and I’ve also used the face molds that I used to use for making goddess figurines. I’ve made molds with strong salt dough too; from a Greenman plaque and various thrift store figurines, to get a better variety of face molds. Rubber stamps have also been useful.

As far as I can tell, you can make anything with “strong salt dough” that you could make with the regular kind. I’ve gotten a couple of craft books at the library that had pretty good ideas in them. I’ve been searching thrift stores and used book stores for more. All the best ones seem to be from the 1970’s. I found one that can be read online (PDF); “Morton’s Dough It Yourself Handbook”. That one has some awesomely funky projects in it, a good idea book.

So coming up, I’ll be sharing pictures and processes for various things I’ve made lately from salt dough; goddess figurines, wall plaques for my shrine, ritual beads… Stay tuned, I’ve spaced them out to post at various times throughout the year.

I’m one of those people who were kind of thrifty before the recession.  For example; we don’t have cable TV, we cut our own hair, get most of our clothes from thrift shops, and most of our books and movies from the library.  I love the serendipity of finding something I need (or will need) on the cheap, or free.  I found my daughter’s bed frame leaning against a dumpster- sanded and varnished it and it’s beautiful!  I often find great kids books on the “free cart” at the library book store- usually the only thing wrong with them is they need a little tape. 
I like to make my hobbies thrifty too.  I love re-purposing things.  From time to time I’m going to write about the thrifty crafts/hobbies I enjoy.  This time it’s about sewing.

There are several books out there about reworking old t-shirts.  My youngest daughter and I really got into some of those.  She was especially interested because she often gets t-shirts for school clubs, etc. that are way too big for her, so these books helped her come up with cool ways to alter her t-shirts to fit better and look really fashionable:  Generation T: 108 Ways to Transform a T-Shirt by Megan Nicolay, and  99 Ways to Cut, Sew, Trim, and Tie Your T-Shirt into Something Special by Faith Blakeney, Justina Blakeney, Anka Livakovic, and Ellen Schultz (both from the library, of course).  She had so much fun making these shirts, that she is now interested in fashion as a career and is going to take sewing classes at school.
I don’t sew very often now, but when my daughters were little it was a big hobby of mine.  I made their old receiving bankets into nightgowns for them when they were toddlers.  Back then, WalMart had cheap fabric and half-price patterns- most of the WalMarts around here don’t even have a fabric department anymore. 
Some of my favorite things to sew didn’t require patterns though.  For a simple skirt, all you need is to sew a fabric tube in the length and width you need, make a casing for the elastic, thread it through, sew it up and sew up hems.  When my girls were little, I made halter dresses for them using this method with shoulder straps sewn on the top.  Another method I like is to cut the top off of some old jeans (or over-alls), and sew a skirt bottom (gathered at the top with a gathering stitch, no elastic) onto it. 
I found a lot of helpful instructions for sewing without patterns from these two books I found at the library: Clothes without Patterns by Fay Morgan, and Living More with Less by Doris Janzen Longacre.  Also, this month’s edition of Ready Made magazine has some pretty awesome ideas for re-crafting clothes.