Make Your Own Clay Shape Cutters

It's Tool Tip Thursday and Rubina (Gemini Arts and Crafts) has lots of ideas for making your own clay cutters.  Supplies needed for this project are an aluminum sheet or tin sheet, scissors, pen, ruler, glue (steel bond), a wood block, hammer and nails to insert in the wood block to help get shape and curves of cutter.

Meet a New Clay: Apoxie Sculpt

Most of the time we talk about air-dry clay, but The New Clay News is about ALL no-bake clays and today I'd like to introduce you to  Apoxie Sculpt, a modeling compound that cures with a chemical reaction rather than air-dry.  Apoxie Sculpt from Aves Studio is a 2-part self-hardening product with a putty-like, smooth consistency.  It is easy to mix and use, just mix and knead Parts A & B together for 2 minutes until thoroughly combined and a uniform color is achieved.  Cures hard in 24 hours without oven or kiln.  Working time is 2-3 hours.  Adheres to many other materials and can be seamlessly feathered before set-up or sanded, tapped, drilled, carved, lathed, or otherwise tooled after set-up!    Clean-up with Aves Safety Solvent or soap and water.

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!

Tutorial Tuesday 7/24

It's been a  busy week at the homefront and only posted one tutorial this week!    This is a good one to make with the kids...a pink pig made from a water bottle and Cloud Clay.

Tutorial Tuesday

Gosh, I can't believe how fast a week can go by sometimes!  It's Tuesday again and, just in case you missed one, it's time to review the new tutorials posted this past week at my Air-Dry Clay Tutorial Directory.  First up we have instructions for creating a life-like Heron using gourds and paperclay.   Some amazing sculptures can be created with these 2 simple materials and Phyllis Sickles shows us how.

Tutorial Tuesday

That's me being surprised at
how long it's been since last post!!

Well, it seems I've taken a 6 month vacation from posting here at New Clay News! I didn't realize that it's been so long....my apologies, I've really been busy. Been involved in writing a book about the history of our town and spent some time in the hospital, among other things. 


The book draft is now at the publisher and my health is doing OK, so maybe I can get back into playing with clay and into the old routine of posting often. Let's start with catching up on some of the newest tutorials posted over at my Air Dry Clay Tutorial Directory.

Tuesday Tutorials

Sculpting a OOAK doll head with air-dry-clay

Easy Snowmen to Make With the Kids

Beer Bottle Doll

Skinny Doll with Pink Dress

Make a Cute Reindeer

Today we have a video demo showing you how to create a cute little reindeer with polymer clay.  But this blog is suppose to be about air-dry clay, right?   It is.   This demo is a good one to use as an example of how to modify a polymer clay tutorial when using air dry clay.   The types of air-dry clays that work best for this sort of project are the soft, pre-colored clays such as Makin's Clay, Hearty Clay,

Make a Tool Caddy

Do you need something in your workspace to hold all your sculpting tools, paint brushes, markers, etc?  This tool caddy was originally designed for keeping colored pencils organized but could be modified to store any number of things!    I especially like the stair-step levels that keep the back row accessible!    The following video shows, step-by-step, how to make your own "storage station".

Halloween Spiders

You can call off the search party....I'm not lost!!!  LOL   I'm here and still trying to get caught up with my email and projects.   It's been a month since my last post and I have to say I'm sorry I'm having such a hard time getting back into the old blogging routine since my surgery!    Some new tutorials have been posted at my Air-Dry-Clay Tutorial Directory and the Cold Porcelain Tutorial Directory....so please check those sites.   

I've been thinking about doing more articles about all the air-dry clay artists, along with more reviews about the different self-hardening clays and other materials.  This could be a new focus for the New Clay News but there will still be lots of tutorials on my other blogs (with latest tutorials listed in sidebar here).   If you have any ideas or suggestions for the New Clay News,  all comments are welcome!

For today I wanted to tell you about this Halloween spider project from "Simple As That".   This Spooky Stone Spiders tutorial describes making the spooky critters using some scraps of wire, rocks and a few other things (see above photo).   These are really creepy and simple to make with stones found around the yard....but we're clay crafters, right?   Let's try making some of these using air-dry clay for the body.   Quick and easy!!   Kids will love 'em!!

New Tutorials This Week

The newest tutorials posted this week over at my Air-Dry-Clay.com tutorial directory  are:

A bowl made with Creative Paperclay   This is big!  Not a simple round bowl!

A cute little bookmark mouse   Cute, easy and quick.  Makes a great little gift!

Monster face keychain charms    Funny faces with a steampunk attitude!  Also good magnet!

Make a rainstick with Paperclay   Listen to the sound of rain in the middle of Summer heat!

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.

How to Make This Cute Scarecrow

air-dry-clay demo

This video tutorial from Linda Peterson shows us how to use several different colors of Cloud Clay to make an autumn scarecrow.   By changing the face (to look less like a scarecrow), this could be a cute figure for many other occasions..or maybe a clown!

How to Photograph Your Clay Jewelry for Online Sales

Homemade Photo Studio

How to Make a Homemade Black Ice Photo Kit.  Desired Creations share tips for photographing your hand-crafted jewelry.  Professional photographers often use a black background with a very soft bright spot highlighting the jewelry.    Author says:  "....not being a professional photographer, I saw no justification to spend lots of money for the special kit."  Read article to learn  how to create, at a low cost, the photographic lighting style used in better quality publications.

Create these cute dolls with cold porcelain or other air-dry clay.
http://www.mulhercriativa.com.br/biscuit/casal-teen

Materials needed are pre-tinted clay in white, black, blue, yellow, red, brown, green and flesh plus barbeque skewers or lollipop sticks for legs.

Page is written in Portuguese, but lots of good photos show step-by-step without translating ....or use Google Translate. http://translate.google.com/

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.

How to Make Clay Carnations

Here's another step-by-step tutorial for creating clay Carnations.   This tutorial by Priya Nanthakumar uses air-dry clay to create the flowers.   About a year ago, we posted a Carnation tutorial which adapted a sugarcraft tutorial to air-dry clay.   The methods used are slightly different in each tutorial but both result in a quite realistic Carnation.

Here's a few tips when following this tutorial:
Author recommends oil paints to pre-tint the clay but acrylic paints may also be used.   Artists quality oils and acrylics will give you stronger reds and dark colors than craft paints.   If you want pastel pinks or yellows, craft acrylics could be used instead of the tube paints.

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! ;-)

  

How to Make a Mosaic Box

Decorate a wooden box with mosaic tiles made with Delight air-dry clay.   Frame a photo for top of box!  See step-by-step tutorial at Paperclay.com