Slip and Score

Here's a tip from the Creative Paperclay blog for attaching pieces together!  With Creative Paperclay you can create a slip just like they do with traditional kiln-fired clays and use it to bond Paperclay pieces together.

Meet a New Clay Artist: Oksana Dyachenko

Summer Flowers, closeup

Oksana Dyachenko is an artist from the Ukraine who creates dolls and toys.  In her profile she says she has enjoyed creating bears and dolls for a long time. She calls them her "kids" and, roughly translated, says:  "My kids are very different, funny, sweet, thoughtful, loved. They are all alive, warm and genuine. I have put into their creation a piece of each one's soul.  I work with ease, love and inspiration and I'd like to have my work pleased you with warm and uplifting feeling."

It's Tutorial Tuesday Again!

Three new air-dry clay tutorials this week.

Steampunk Paperclay Book
Paperclay book (shown above) with embellishments such as safety pins
and lots and lots of scrapbooking items!

Clearing Up Some Mis-information About ADC

Happy Independence Day to our friends in USA!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I'm going to take an opportunity today to rant a little!   Hope you don't mind!  I'm tired of seeing websites passing out mis-information about air-dry clay and I want to set the record straight.

I do a lot of searching and surfing for new air-dry clay information and tutorials and in the past week or two I've come across a number of websites writing about air-dry clay but they don't really know what they're talking about.  These sites are passing around bad information.  It's become my new pet-peeve!

Tips for Working with Creative Paperclay

Creative Paperclay is a unique air hardening modeling material that requires no firing in a kiln or baking in an oven. It is clean, odorless and easy to use. It feels similar to an earthen clay; however, it contains no clay in it at all!

A page full of tips for working with Creative Paperclay from the people that make Paperclay can be found at paperclay.com

        

Fast Drying Tip

Chicken Lips (David Everett) is in the business of making cute and clever characters with Creative Paperclay and needs to speed up production time....so here's his tip for getting your Paperclay to dry a bit faster.

Note:  Drying TOO fast (such as oven) is NOT recommended for most ADC creations.  Air dry clay needs to dry evenly inside & out.   Also, Styrofoam is often used for armature with air-dry clays and heating Styrofoam in oven can create toxic fumes!   Not good !

Make a Decorative Apple Tree

This looks like a fun project.   Create this decorative "Apple Tree" with Creative Paperclay and an apple-shaped gourd.   Click here for instructions written by Barbara at Creative Paperclay.   If you don't have a gourd like the one used by Barbara, there's inexpensive foam apples that look very real and can be purchased in various colors or you can shape your own from Paperclay.

Make Miniature People with Darwi or Paperclay

This French artist (Lauren) has created a whole village of miniature people from Darwi air-dry clay.   These are uncomplicated little dolls with painted features and clothes made of paper.  Creative Paperclay would work well for this project also.

Air Dry Clay Name Tags or Ornaments

Stephanie shows us a no-calorie way to use candy molds. She uses air dry clay (Creative Paperclay) to create name tags or ornaments.

Demo: Paperclay Dolls by Polka Dot Pixie

Air-dry clay tutorial from The Polka Dot Pixie showing how she makes her small dolls/fairies using Styrofoam, Paperclay and a wire armature.  This is an easy tutorial for a basic painted doll figure, with your choice of paperclay painted hair or applied hair!   Head, hands and feet are made of clay but body armature is padded out with foil and wrapped in white floral paper tape.

Tutorial: Creating a BJD Head and Face

~ click photos to enlarge ~    

Linda Macario, the Italian doll-maker, has written a wonderful tutorial for creating the head for a BJD (ball-jointed doll) .   LaDoll air-dry clay is suggested.  Creative Paperclay would also be suitable for this project.   Lots of photos demonstrate how to sculpt the Styrofoam core, apply the clay, model the facial features, hollow out the head & insert the eyes and also create the head articulation.

Further steps in the tutorial demonstrate how she paints the delicate features (called "face-up") to create a doll similar to the ones shown in these photos!   Aren't they beautiful?   Linda is an amazing doll artist!   This is a great air dry clay tutorial even if you're not interested in making a full BJD body and just want to sculpt the face.   I hope this encourages you to make your first doll!   I'm excited to try it myself! ;-)

  

Ball-Jointed Doll (BJD), Step by Step

BJD from BlueFairy dolls

What is a BJD?   A BJD is a ball-jointed doll .....any doll that is articulated with ball and socket joints.  Body elements are held together by thick elastic cords, making them fully articulated and highly poseable.  BJDs are capable of standing on their own, without a stand or other support, and are also capable of very natural looking poses.

WIP by Morezmore (OOAK)

Such a doll is sometimes called an 'articulated puppet'. A favorite pastime among collectors and hobbyists are posing their dolls and photographing them in various positions that imitate real life.

How to Make a Paperclay Snowman

This is a 5-part video demo from MLB Studios showing us how to make this folk art snowman with stick legs that can either stand or hang from tree.   Creative Paperclay is used but many other air-dry clays would work as well.    Using an instant papier mache (such as Celluclay) could give it an even more vintage look and feel!

Part 1... Making the Armature



Part 2... Adding the features



Part 3... Adding details



Part 4... Adding color



Part 5... Finish

Paperclay Christmas Ornaments

Martha Stewart shows us how to make ornaments with Creative Paperclay and cookie molds.   Delight Clay is from same company but is ultra-lightweight, so might be an even better choice for ornaments!

Customize a Face Mold for Santa

Air-dry clay can be used with push molds just like polymer clay.  Today's tutorial from Polymer Clay Express shows you how to customize a Polyform (Sculpey) face mold to create a Santa face.   The completed face can be used for an ornament, package topper or a Santa doll.    Tutorial:  Customizing "Grandpa" to make a Santa ornament    Even though the tutorial was written for polymer clay, the steps are essentially the same with air-dry clay...just don't bake and let it air dry instead.    You can leave the clay in the mold while drying, if desired.    

The tutorial doesn't make it clear that flesh colored clay must have been used to start with (it looks white in photos) because it skips the step to paint the flesh color and goes right into antiquing.    For air-dry clay users, you can tint the raw clay in advance or paint with acrylics after it cures.    I prefer multiple THIN layers of paint for the skin tones.    

Only the very soft air-dry clays are available pre-colored and other brands must be pre-tinted or painted.   Some soft clays may work OK in the push molds but many soft brands do not hold detail well.   It will look OK at first, but as it dries it sorta 'puffs-up' and detail gets lost.      Clay brands such as Creative Paperclay,  Delight and LaDoll may work better.   Those clays also allow more customizing because re-shaping and blending of seams is easier.   Please leave comment if you have any questions!

Make a Chef-themed kitchen noteboard

Every kitchen should have a chalkboard kitchen sign to display the evening’s menu, a grocery list, or a To-Do list for the chef.   This one is made with Creative Paperclay, some white fabric and a purchased chalkboard.   This would make a great holiday gift also!    See how-to instructions for this project at Michaels.com

Make a Paperclay Pumpkin Pail

This clever Halloween tutorial from Carmen Ellis (Spooky Hollow Folk Art Designs) is full of humor and tips for using Creative Paperclay.    Create the miniature pumpkin pail shown in photo above starting with a hollowed-out Styrofoam ball and Paperclay  (makes about a 4 inch pail).   Go to this page for Carmen's "Poor Man's Pumpkin Pail".

Here's a sampling showing her sense of humor....some things you may relate to!

• If you are half blind like me you might want to put your glasses on. ( My glasses are pitiful due to the dog eating them one night. ) 

You'll need:

• Paper towel, ( I get super messy. Probably because of my half eaten glasses. )
• Exacto tool or a sharp kitchen knife…( Don’t run with pointy objects )
• Or whatever you can find around the house to sculpt with. (Please don’t use your cat.)

She also suggests placing the sculpt in a 200 degree oven to speed up drying.   I'd hesitate to recommend that.   Styrofoam could give off some toxic fumes when heated.    Even if the foam ball is wrapped in clay, it still doesn't seem like a great idea to me.

What does sound like a great idea is to make some miniature pumpkins from Paperclay using the designs shared last week in Pumpkin Carving Lesson and Pumpkin Carving Part 2 along with the ideas shared in the tutorial above!

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

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

Meet a New Clay ~ Creative Paperclay

Creative Paperclay  is a very popular brand of no-bake clay because it is easy to work with and can be sculpted, molded or shaped.  It is odorless and very user friendly. I have Rheumatoid Arthritis, which means my hand strength is very week, but I have no problems modeling with Paperclay.

Manufacturer's Description:   Creative Paperclay®  is a unique air hardening modeling material that requires no firing in a kiln or baking in an oven. It is clean, odorless and easy to use. It feels similar to an earthen clay; however, it contains no clay in it at all!   It can be sculpted, molded or shaped while it's moist and it accepts and retains fine details. It adheres