How to Decoupage a Bangle Bracelet

This tutorial for creating a decoupage bracelet from papier mache pulp and a recycled masking tape cardboard core is taken from the book Contemporary Papier Mache: Colorful Sculpture, Jewelry, and Home Accessories

You could create this with your own homemade papier mache or with an "instant" product like Celluclay.    Just add water to Celluclay to create a papier mache pulp.  You could also use an air-dry clay such as Creative Paperclay or some homemade cold porcelain.  Just about any no-bake clay product should work well and may give you a smoother texture than papier mache (if that was desired).

I see all sorts of possibilities with this idea and I hope you do too!

Part 1. Materials list
Part 2. Making the bangle
Part 3.  Decoupage instructions

How to make terra cotta Easter eggs

Use your imagination to texture a myriad of patterns onto these air-dry clay eggs.
PDF tutorial at http://www.craftcellar.co.uk/contents/en-uk/tips_efaplast_easter-eggs.pdf

Made with Efaplast terracotta clay and plastic eggs (for armature) ....but of course, you can substitute any air-dry-clay that can be rolled into a flat sheet.  Finished eggs are 'antiqued' with white paint.

Sculpting a Party Chick!

With this tutorial from Polka Dot Pixie you can create this cute chicken in an egg using Creative Paperclay and a Styrofoam egg!  View instructions here:
http://thepolkadotpixie.blogspot.com/2007/01/sculpting-party-chick.html
Update 3/17/2011:   The revised version of this tutorial does not include painting instructions, but you can use either one of the photos shown here as a painting guide.

Tutorial: Cold Porcelain Bunny

Get ready for the Spring holidays! This video demo shows you how to make this cute bunny using cold porcelain, plus how to make a matching gift box!

Bookmice - Let's Make Some!

This cute (and useful) bookmark is a great little craft to make with the kids or a quick and easy gift for all your friends!

The original polymer clay tutorial is from the National Wildlife Federation crafts page .   We have edited that polymer clay tutorial and converted it to the air-dry clay tutorial shown below.

You'll never lose your place with these easy-to-make bookmarks!

What You Need:

• Leather string (jewelry cord or shoelace)
• brown, gray or tan air-dry-clay (enough for body & ears) 
• black air-dry clay (for eyes and nose)

Makin's Clay, Hearty Clay and Model Magic are some of the air-dry clay brands that are available in colors but you may pre-tint other (white) air-dry clays using your craft paints.  Just add a little paint to a ball of clay and knead to mix evenly.   You may also send most air-dry clays (such as Paperclay) thru a pasta machine to blend color.  If your brand of clay is a very sticky type, it may not work so well in the pasta machine!  ;-)

Note: Delight Clay is a very lightweight paperclay and would be great for these bookmarks.  Das and a few other brands may be too heavy and not suitable for this use.

What You Do:
1.  Cut a piece of leather string about 10 inches long. Tie a knot at one end.

2.   Mold a lump of clay around the knotted end of the string. Shape the clay into the form of a mouse's body, as shown. (large teardrop)    Use very small amounts of water to smooth surface if necessary.

3.  Add clay ears, eyes, and nose. Press them down firmly to the mouse's body so they won't fall off.   Add white glue if they refuse to stick.    Optional:  Two small black beads can be used for eyes.

4.  Set aside on a flat surface to dry!  It may take a day or two.   (Don't try to speed up drying, you may end up with cracks.)

That's it!  Now, put your bookmouse to use!

How to Make a Clay Birdhouse

This clay birdhouse was made using self-hardening (terra cotta) clay and a balloon.   Instructions from the National Wildlife Federation found here:   Clay-Birdhouse

Add your own flowers and other decorations and maybe a little color!

How to make a cloth doll look like clay

Quite often dolls are completely sculpted from air-dry clays, but there are also a number of techniques used by cloth doll artists to enhance their creations.  There are cloth-over-clay techniques and clay-over-cloth.  In addition, many doll artists will create a cloth body that has a clay head (often with clay hands and feet also) .

These instructions from Rivkah Mizrahi show you how  to make a cloth body look like it's sculpted from clay.  She uses Creative Paperclay. See blog at Dollmakers Muse

Garden wall vignette tutorial

Use your air-dry-clay to create this miniature vignette.   Sized and shaped to suit your own needs. Add mini plants and other decorative items...maybe a mini puppy too!    Tuturial at Hedgehog Homes.

How to make Noah's BJD Doll

A couple of days ago we featured a BJD tutorial on a Russian website, this is another BJD tutorial showing you some additional techniques.    Noah's Doll is sculpted with an air-dry clay stone clay (most likely LaDoll clay).

This site is in Japanese but has been translated to English.
English version.  

What is BJD you ask!

The following description of a BJD was taken from the Noah's Doll tutorial:
It is a kind of a doll with ball-and-socket joints in its body, arms and legs. Limbs and head are joined together by loops of elastic. There are many variations in the way to join each part of a doll.

The drawing at the right shows the basic construction of Noah's doll.
Arms are attached by elastic running through the armholes and torso.

Each leg has its own piece of elastic.  Loops of elastic run from the ankle up through the knee, through the leg-hole and up to the head.  Both loops being hung on a hook inside the neck.

Other ends of the elastic are attached to small "S" shaped hooks  inside the wrists and ankles respectively.

If constructed properly and is well-balanced, a BJD can stand on its own.

Of course, to have this type of joint stringing, the doll must be hollow.   There are several different methods for accomplishing this.   Noah's doll uses a combination of Styroform, sawdust clay and stone clay (LaDoll).    All air-dry products. 

If sawdust clay is not available to you, Celluclay (an instant papier mache pulp) or  an air-dry clay such as Paperclay could possibly be substituted for constructing the base form over the Styrofoam.    Do not use polymer clay for base layer because the Styrofoam armature CANNOT be placed in oven.

I think the main reason for using the sawdust clay is that (1) it's the traditional way and (2) is to keep down the cost and the weight.  The Styrofoam armature will be removed after the "core" layer has dried....then every part will be hollow.   This "core" layer will be the base for applying the final layer of  LaDoll  and the detail modeling.   LaDoll dries very hard and durable and can be sanded and polished to a fine finish.  

Hope you enjoy this tutorial and try making your own BJD.   For future reference, I will be adding this tutorial to my Air Dry Clay Tutorial Directory.

How to make a doll's straw hat

This blog may be about air-dry clay and sculpting figures with our favorite clay, but sometimes we need accessories for those figures!   

Today I stumbled across this blog with a great tutorial for creating a stylish straw hat for your dolls and figures.

How to make a doll's straw hat

Depending on how you embellish the hat, you can create some very different looks!

UPDATE April 2013:   Apparently the blog with this hat tutorial has gone offline.   There's another doll's straw hat tutorial at A Doll Dresser.  (scroll down her page a little to find tutorial).

How to Sculpt a BJD Doll using Paperclay

My friend Karin from the Air-Dry-Clay Yahoo Group led me to this website called "Between us, girls" that has a terrific series of articles by Galina Ishimikli about sculpting BJD dolls (ball-jointed) using Creative Paperclay (or Japanese paperclay).

What a great tutorial!   Galina takes you step by step through the whole process.  http://mstrok.ucoz.ru/publ/69-1-0-292

First she creates a 2-part head, showing you how to make it hollow.   Also includes lots of steps for shaping features and inserting eyes.  Then she sculps a hollow body and adds limbs with hinged ball joints in all the 'bendy' places.


This is a really terrific 5 star tutorial!   Great photos and instructions throughout....but must be translated from Russian if you don't read Russian yourself!  

Google Translate does a pretty good job with it...only a few odd words when translated to English! LOL

Even if you don't make a hollow BJD doll with this tutorial....it's still worth reading. If you don't want to fuss with making it hollow or fuss with moveable joints...it still a great tutorial for shaping body parts.   Just leave the Styrofoam inside and follow the instructions for forming the facial features and the rest of the body.
 
This one is definitely going on my "to do" list.   I will take my own step-by-step photos to show you when I get a chance to do it!!!    I can't hardly wait to try it!   Hope you do too!

Christmas Cat Tutorial

This tutorial from Makin's Clay shows you how to create this cute Christmas kitty. http://www.makinsclay.com/US/eng/project_gallery/seasonal/xmas06.htm

Makin's Clay is one of the air-dry clays that is available in colors. However, if you want to use Creative Paperclay for this project or another brand that is only available in white, you can pre-tint the clay with acrylic paints or a little bit of cake colorant paste, like that made by Wilton.

Beautiful air-dry clay flower arrangement

Have you ever made flowers with clay?   Many brands of air-dry clay can be made into very thin, translucent petals that are also strong.   "Craft Ideas for All" has a nice little tutorial for creating roses and cherry blossoms to make the pretty arrangment shown here.     Other posts on their blog indicate that they use both Delight clay and Deco clay for their flowers.    

Tip:  This tutorial tints the air-dry clay with acrylic paints.   A less messy method is to use paste cake colorants like those made by Wilton .   Colorant sets are available in soft pastel, flower colors.

Hope you enjoy this tutorial!

Tutorial: Easy holiday ornament

Here's a quick and easy air-dry clay ornament to make. I bet you could come up with all kinds of ideas for different words and for customizing this project.

Author includes a link to the font she used to trace letters.
http://ginghamcherry.blogspot.com/2009/12/joy-to-world.html

Introduction to Claymation

Do you like the claymation films as much as I do? Have you always wanted to try doing your own claymation? Here's a short introduction to the process. This  tutorial from Dick Blick (PDF) was written as instructions for a school project, but I think it is suitable for both kids and adults!

This project would be a great project to share with the kids. It goes thru the steps of planning a storyboard, taking the photos and creating the animation of a butterfly: Claymation Metamorphasis .

Plasticine clay is usually used to create stop-motion animation because it never dries and shapes can be

Tutorial: Personalized Ornament #2

Here's another personalized Christmas ornament that you can give as a gift or make for yourself.   This tutorial for a teddy bear family and house ornament is from Makin's Clay.   Makin's Clay is an air-dry clay that is available in many colors, but other brands of air-dry clay will work as well.   Most air dry clays are only available in white, but you can pre-tint clay with acrylic paints or paste colorants .... or paint after curing!

Tell us about the personalized ornaments you've made with air dry clay!  Do you have any tips to share?   ;-)

Tutorial: Personalized Ornament

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving and a nice holiday weekend (in USA)!  I was busy with Thanksgiving and shopping from Black Friday to Cyber Monday!  TOO much time spent shopping...LOL!  Haven't had any time to post on this blog, but now my Christmas shopping is all done and maybe now I can come up with some new tips and tricks for your clay projects. 

This Tuesday Tutorial is from Makin's Clay to create a personalized Christmas ornament with air-dry clay.   Makin's Clay and a few other brands are

Curing tips for air dry clays

The following tips are excerpts from the book  Fantastic Figures: Ideas and Techniques Using the New Clays by the late and great Susanna Oroyen.

"When I asked other artists how they proceed, I found about half work pretty much as I do. The rest do all kinds of interesting things....The following descriptions apply most specifically to Creative Paperclay, but the basic techniques and effects are approximately the

Shaun the Sheep keychain

If you've been following this blog, you probably know I'm a fan of Shaun the Sheep and the claymation characters from Aardman Animation.   One of my first blog posts shared a photo of my clay figure (made with Creative Paperclay) of Shirley the Sheep (from Shaun's flock) and Babs, the knitting chicken (from Chicken Run).   Today I stumbled across some how-to instructions for making a cute

Baby Doll made with Paperclay

For this Tutorial Thursday, I'd like to share one of the more interesting Paperclay tutorials.  Ellen Harris has created this very realistic baby completely from Creative Paperclay.

How I make dolls with Creative Paperclay

Using some traditional methods she has created a doll with moveable joints using ...."my fingers, toothpicks, a wookie, a small set of brushes, two teeny round iron rasps, small ball stylus and everything else that