Spotlight on Akira and Larry Blount

Akira Blount and her husband Larry make dolls from cloth with air-dried clay over it.  Sometimes another layer of fabric is added. Akira's work has been admired and collected all over the world. The White House Collection of American Craft is a collection of over 70 pieces of contemporary

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

Which Glue to Use?

Sooner or later you'll want to glue clay pieces together or to glue something to the clay...and you'll wonder which glue to use.  Babs, the knitting chicken, needed some knitting needles.  So I glued some colored toothpicks into her hands.  Yes, I actually did knit a few rows of "wool" (crochet thread) using the toothpicks....it was a lot easier

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