Monday 13 June 2016

Air-dry Clay name bunting

As I run workshops for young folks, I keep having to come up with new ideas so they keep coming back to take part.

Sometimes the ideas just ping into my head and sometimes I have to dig deep to find things that inspire me enough to make.

Now, this is a surprising one, especially as you might have read my previous blog about my awful attempts at pottery, but I picked up a block of Air-Dry clay and a tub of Wilton Alphabet Cookie Cutters.

Rolling out the clay to shortbread thickness, I then looked about for things to texture it with.  I am SURE I have texture plates somewhere... just cannot find them!

The first thing I used was some hessian sacking.... BIG MISTAKE, the clay was suddenly covered with tiny brown hairs that took ages to pick off.  I used bubble wrap and lace for other pieces, along with just jabbing other pieces with various tools to create a pattern.


I also wanted the clay to be painted at the same time - normally you would need the clay to dry before painting it, but then I would need to make parents buy paints to take away which seemed a bit unfair.

After a chat to some colleagues we came up with the plan of mixing acrylic paint with PVA glue which would form a kind of thick glaze which wouldn't be too wet and which shouldn't hinder the drying out stage afterwards.

And you know what?  It worked!



As for the workshop, it went really well...


1 comment:

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