Carole's Top Five Tips for Using Creative Paperclay®

Creating with Creative Paperclay® modeling material and Delight™ air dry modeling compound is fun and easy!! Here is a quick list of my top five tips for using these great products.

1. Have slip handy and use it. Here a great blog post all about slip.
2. Allow plenty of time for your projects to dry thoroughly—usually overnight, but it could be longer, depending on the thickness of your clay.
3. You can speed up the drying time by heating your clay pieces in a 250° oven.
4. Cornstarch is great for preventing the clay from sticking to work surfaces and molds.
5. USE IT!! Play with it. Try something untried. You can't break the clay (while you're working with it, anyway ☺). If it's not what your want, just gather it into a ball and begin again.

You can see projects on my Create & Craft blog.

Carole

How Do I Color Thee...?

There are several ways to color your clay sculptures. Here's a quick run down of some of my favorite ways to add color to the raw clay.

1. Acrylic paint—Knead the paint right into the clay. Use a small amount of paint to begin with. Remember: it's always easier to add more paint than to take it away.
2. Food coloring—Knead small amounts into to clay. Paste food colorings also work, but when working with these I always wear rubber gloves to protect my hands from getting dyed in the process. 
3. Mica powder—When you knead these into the clay, since the mica powders are dry, you may need to add just a drop or two of water to maintain the consistency or the clay.
4. Glitter—Knead it into the raw clay. You may need to add just a drop or two of water to maintain the consistency or the clay.

There are also multiple ways to color a finished piece of clay sculpture:

1. Acrylic paints—Perhaps the most frequently used method of adding details to a finished piece, just paint it on.
2. Water color paints—Straight forward. Just paint them on, taking care to use only a minimal amount of water so as not to soften the clay.
3. Mica powders—These can be dry brushed onto the piece, much like applying blush :), or they can be mixed with a medium and painted on.
4. Inks—Stamp pad inks can be applied by dipping an artist brush in water and picking up color from the stamp pad. 
5. Glimmer Mist or Perfect Pearls Mist—Carefully misted onto a finished piece, these can add a lovely hint of shimmering color.
6. Permanent markers—These add rich details to your piece. 
7. PPA—I love this medium for a final coating for my pieces, sealing and protecting the sculpture. It comes in both matte and glossy, so I have a choice depending on what I want the final piece to look like.

As with all things related to art, just because it hasn't been done before, doesn't mean you shouldn't try it!! These are just some of my favorite coloring agents, but I know there's got to be loads more.

Carole

Egyptian Inspired Jewelry

I love the clean, simple lines of Egyptian jewelry. This piece was inspired by a collection at the Metropolitan Museum. It is an elegant piece of jewelry, but the project is one that even a young artist can be success with.

I started by extruding several lines of clay using different tips to see which would give me the look I was trying to achieve. I decided on the finest full round tip for this jewelry piece.

I extruded a 24" length of clay on my work table. Measuring the clay helps ensure size consistency from piece to piece. You could also roll the clay into a long, slender snake by hand. The extruder makes it quicker—and I'm an instant gratification kind of gal. ☺

I worked flat on the table, rotating the disc rather than trying to wrap the length of clay around the outer edge. I used a coffee stir as the foundation for the coiled bead. Carefully rotated the stir with one hand while guiding the length of clay around it with the other.

When I was finished with the coiling, I gave each piece a gently water wash with a soft brush dipped in warm water. After the pieces were dry I coated them with Duo Adhesive and Brilliant Gold Gildenglitz. Alternatively, you could coat the pieces with a gold metallic acrylic paint. Here you can see the disc and coiled bead during the gilding process.

Coiled bead

Coiled disc base

I used E6000 to attach the coiled bead to the center of the disc and to and a pin finding to the back of the disc. My Egyptian inspired pin look fabulous on a dark jacket lapel!!

Mark your calendars for our blog hop on February 8!! Lot's of fab projects to share.

Carole

Looking for Inspiration

Hi, there!! Carole here with a tip on sources of inspiration. I find there are times when my idea well has run dry. This is when I need to search for inspiration. Here are my top sources for inspiration when my creativity has zoned out.

1. Pinterest—But, I don't just look for clay projects. I especially like looking through Architecture, Art, and Design boards.
2. Catalogs—Especially ones from museums and ones that have jewelry offerings.
3. Toys—I find that lots of kid's toys can be recreated in clay or serve as a springboard for a project.
4. Journal—I keep a journal of ideas. All kinds of notes and comments go in there. Not every note is project related, but I'm sure to find something in my journal that will jump start my brain.
5. Online—Natalie Kalbach's Creative Jump Start is loaded with ideas. This is a must-have for all your creative types. 
6. Walk—No matter where I walk—going from room to room in my house, an walk outside or a stroll through the mall—I'm sure to see at least one thing that sparks my creative imagination.
7. Blog Posts—I start reading through past blog posts right here on the Creative Paperclay blog. It doesn't take too long before inspiration strikes.
8. Creative Paperclay—I just knead a ball of clay. Move it in my hands. Let the clay do what it wants to. Pretty soon I've got a real project underway :) 

How do you find inspiration when your creativity takes a vacation?

Snowman Finger Puppet

Hi!! Carole here with a quick and easy project that you can do with kids!! A clay finger puppet!!

You can vary the complexity of the project depending on the age of the child. Let the child do as many of the steps as they can/want to.

Start with a ball of clay.

Flatten the ball of clay. An older child could use a rolling pin, but this four year old just pressed in down with her fingers.

Mold the clay around the child’s index finger. Try to use a small amount of clay, so the puppet isn’t too heavy, especially for those pre-school fingers.

Shape this base as desired. We decided on a snowman. Simple and easy for my four year old grand-daughter. An older child might want more detail.

Gently lift off the finger and set aside. Next we made a little carrot nose.

Now the hard part—waiting for it to dry. Set expectation about this at the very beginning of the project, so your young artist doesn’t expect a finished product immediately.

Next, we embellished our snowman. We painted the carrot nose and while it was drying, we painted the snowman body with thinned down water-based adhesive and sprinkled with fine clear glitter. We glued on his googly eyes, nose and rhinestone buttons. (Yes, you'll see blobs of glue around the eyes, nose and buttons. The form isn't as smooth and refined as it could be, but

There are lots of ways to embellish this basic form to get a whole cast of characters. Paint it brown, add a red pompom or rhinestone nose and chenille stems for antlers, and you have a reindeer. Paint the lower two-thirds green and the upper third flesh-toned. Add button eyes and a nose, use a Sharpie to draw a mouth and you have an elf.

Visit my Create & Craft blog to see what else I'm working on.

Carole

Tip: Look Beyond the Usual

Hey, there!! Carole here with a tip for you. Consider all possible sources when looking for your clay crafting supplies. Look beyond the clay aisle at your favorite big box craft store. Venture into the cake and candy making aisles!!Look beyond the art supply stores—what about the toy store, the hardware store?? And my personal favorite—local thrift and resale shops.

I found this gem of a princess castle at the thrift shop. It has molds everywhere—each side has a princess gown and there are accessory pieces bordering the bottom.

This couldn't be any easier!! Remember: it was originally made for a kid!! Here you can see I've loaded this gown mold with clay.

The  clay released from the mold beautifully. I'll have a bit of sanding and final touch-up, but very little. Here is the molded princess gown laid out to dry. 

Princess Gown

I'm intrigued by the bitty accessory pieces. They each could hid behind a dime.

Princess Fan

Rosebud

So--tell me where do you look for your alternative art supplies? What do you find?

Visit my Create & Craft blog to see what else I'm working on.

Carole

Redheaded Fairy

Hi!! I'm Carole Lassak, a new member of the design team and contributor to the Creative Paperclay Blog, I dabble in lots of craft areas, but jewelry, mixed media, and paper seem to be the ones that I come back to again and again. This Redheaded Fairy may morph into a jewelry piece at some time in the future, but for now the little sprite graces my work area.

Here are the supplies that I used to bring her to life:

• Creative Paperclay® modeling material
• Amazing Mold Putty
• Terri Sproul Mixers (Copper Penny and Gold)
• USArtQuest PPA
• USArtQuest Perfect Pigment acrylic paint (White Satin Pearl)
• Spellbinders Media Mixage Rectangles One bezel
• ETI Jewelry Clay
• Rubber stamp
• Coiling Gizmo
• Copper wire
• Clay extruder
• Dremel
• Assorted beads and rhinestone
• Eye hook and jump ring
• Wings reclaimed from a thrift store garden decoration

The original of her face was a pin and I used Amazing Mold Putty to make a mold of it. I piled Creative Paperclay® modeling material into the mold, taking care to press the clay into all of her facial features. After drying overnight it popped right out of the mold.

Next, I painted her face with White Pearl acrylic paint. When the paint dried, I drilled a starter hole for the screw eye at her neck and added three tiny rhinestones to her cheek.

I learned through trial and error that it was nearly impossible to completely cover the hair with paint. There are just too many tiny nooks and crannies. So I added Copper Penny Mixer into the modeling material to color it. With the Mixer thoroughly incorporated into the Creative Paperclay, I extruded the clay onto a teflon mat, and left it to dry. The clay extruder is just like a miniature cookie press, with several interchangeable tips. And SO fun to use. You'll be sure to see more projects from me that use it.

When her hair was dry, I mixed Copper Penny Mixer to PPA to make a paint-like substance. I used this to coat the hair.

Extruded hair

Clay extruder with painted hair

Her legs are coiled copper wire made on the Coiling Gizmo, with beads added for feet. I used the Dremel to drill two holes in the bottom edge of the bezel to feed the wires through. I crimped the wires inside the empty bezel.

I filled the bezel for her body with jewelry clay, dusted it with a Mixer, and gently stamped into it with a rubber stamp. The jewelry clay will permanently trap the wire ends from her legs and the Mixer gives it a permanent metallic finish. I also used jewelry clay to attach her hair to her face and her head and body to her wings.

I'm thinking of naming my redheaded beauty. Any suggestions for a name? Let me know what you think.

You can see more projects on my Create & Craft blog.

Carole