Happy Cauldron Tealight

Hello Instructables,
There seemed to be a lot of love for my last instructable (Rock trolls/stone faces) so I thought I would share another similar project in the form of the happy cauldron tealight. It uses a lot of the same techniques as the rock trolls but is a little bit more involved as you need to bake it in stages.

Lets begin :)

Materials.

Black polymer clay (fimo/sculpy)

A glass jar, lid not required with all the labels removed. (I am using a antipasti jars that i saw with an interesting shape but this will work with most short jars*)

Green acetate (again this can be a different colour or not even included at all.

Super glue

An electric tea light

Wet wipes or a jar with some water for smoothing out

Tools.
Something to sculpt with (fingers are fine but toothpicks, paper clips or chopsticks can be useful)

An acrylic rolling pin or glass bottle

Craft knife

scissors

Pen

*Please note I take no responsibility if you start buying random things in jars because the shape will make something nice, I certainly never do that.....ahem

Important note: a lot of my measurements are based on the size of this particular jar so you may want to adjust yours accordingly.

To Start roll out some fimo about 5mm thick and trim it into a rectangle about 6 x 1.5 inches approximately, then chop that into two smaller but equal rectangles.
From here you are going to want to cut the rectangle into two triangle like shapes with the tops cut off as seen in the pictures (This shape is called a trapezoid, I had to look that up for this instructable. every day's a school day)

Once you have four of these roll the thinner edge until roughly the half way point then in the opposite direction do the same for the thinker edge. It should look like an "S" when you are done.

Repeat for the other three trying to keep them roughly the same height (dont stress too much about this as you will see why in a few steps)

Bake them as instructed by your brand of Polymer clay

Roll out some more clay (you can go thinner than before) and wrap it around your jar.
Dont worry about covering the bottom but you may want a small lip to attach your legs to (the shape of this particular jar lends itself to in nicely)

at the top of the jar trim away about 5mm so you can see the glass

So I have made this a happy cauldron but obviously you can change its expression to whatever you like (particularly for Halloween). This is going to be quite a long bit so apologies in advance.

Start off by cutting out the shapes you want for the eyes and mouth

Nose
Take a small part of your left over clay and shape it into a nose shape. This can be any shape you want, big and round, long and thin. Once in place smooth of the edges to make sure its properly attached the the "head"

For the nostrils make two small balls and press them against the side of the nose. You can use the tip of a pencil or toothpick to make the "nose holes" but also help attach the nostrils.

To give it more definition/cheeks you can add a couple of small snakes from the nostrils to the corners of the mouth and blend the edge towards where the eyes will be.

Mouth

For the Lips roll out 2 snakes of clay. If you taper the edges it will blend on to the face easier.
For the upper lip I shaped it with a divot in the middle, kinda like an "M"

Place them along the edges of the shape you cut out and blend/smooth the edges into the face.

You can also add a bit here to give it more of a chin.

Cheeks
Take a bit of clay, make one end quite thing and tapered and the other quite fat and round (think kinda like a tadpole shape) and attach the thin end under the eye hole and take the fatter end over the corner of the mouth. Repeat on the other side.

Eye lids
To make some eye lids make 2 small snakes, place them at the top edge of the eye holes and blend the points at the end in.

Eye brows
Make 2 thick snakes, place it above the eyes. Shape it into the expression you want :)

Pupils/iris's
Take two small balls and place them into the eyes (make sure they are making contact with at least one edge of the eye hole and not just "floating" on the glass as they are likely to fall off)

To make it look a little more cauldron like I added handle loops by rolling out a snake and turning it into a hoop. gently press it against the side of the cauldron and then cutting out a small rectangle about the same thickness as the legs earlier. I attached one edge to the cauldron underneath the hoop and then folded it around the hoop to the top. Repeat for the other side.

Now for the legs.....almost

Turn your cauldron upside down and gently push the prebaked legs into place. Now turn the cauldron back over and VERY GENTLY press own a bit just to create more of an indent from the legs. Take the legs off (you may want to place them so you know what leg goes back with each indent)

Bake your cauldron

Once your cauldron is out of the oven and cooled roll out a thick snake of clay, long enough to go around the opening of the jar but also over it slightly.

Turn the jar upside down again and press down.

Turn it back around and using the craft knife carefully cut away the excess from inside the opening so that there is a flat edge that runs along the edge of the glass.

And now place both the cauldron and and lid back into the oven to bake

You may be wondering why you wouldn't just bake this part at the same time as the main cauldron but it's to make the lid easier to remove for the next step.

Once your cauldron has cooled down remove the lid.

place the upside down cauldron on the acetate, draw around the opening and cut out the circle.

You may need to trim the circle a bit, fit it into the lid.

Using the jar height, measure out a strip of the acetate, you may want to just sit the acetate in the jar to do this. Cut it out and place it in the cauldron.

Glue the legs in place

Put your electronic tealight in and place the lid on top.......

DONE!

As always I hope you enjoyed this instructable and as always, thoughts, comments and even photos of your own Cauldrons, happy or otherwise, are always welcome in the comments section below.