Creative Paperclay - a review

Today we have Vic from Cornish Dragon write a review on air dry clay!

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I have heard of air drying clays before, but never paper clay. This intrigued me and I thought I'd like to try it ot. The clay I purchased was by Creative; other brands are available like DAS and Karugaru.

 

 

So what can you do with Paper Clay? Like polymer clay you can make lots of items with the clay like models, doll making, jewellery, scrapbooking and lots more. The paper clay has some advantages over polymer mainly it doesn’t need to be baked in an oven, its lightweight, it can be painted, moulded over wire, Styrofoam shapes, and you get more for you money. The disadvantages are it can take from 1–3 days for the clay to dry, it can crack while drying and there is only one colour - white.

 

The clay itself wasn’t as white as I was expecting, more a pale grey or ecru, It also has a spongy texture. I cut a piece off my block and started to smooth it over some Styrofoam shapes to form a body. And I used some of my sculpting tools to smooth and shape some features. I did find the clay started to dry as I was working so I found it helpful to have a small bowl of water handy to dip the tools or my fingers in to help smooth out the clay. When I had finished sculpting I placed the finished model on to a playing card and left it to dry.

 

This is my moon gazing hare I also made, for this one I used more water to help smooth out the body. When I finished my hands were covered with clay which washed off very easily, more so than with polymer, and left no residue or dryness.

Both of the sculptures have now dried and they are not as smooth as I would have liked but I will sand the surface to get them smoother, paint them and give them a protective coat of varnish.

I would certainly use the paper clay again; the models I have made are really light which I think would be an advantage in jewellery for making beads.

Vic
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