Monday, January 19, 2015

Air-Dry Clay Bowls


These air-dry clay bowls are ones I made about a month ago. I posted them on my Instagram around then, I just forgot to write a post on them. This is just a craft I did to see how I liked it. I didn't buy anything expensive to use for this project, just Crayola Air-Dry Clay in the color white. I bought it in the tub for really cheap. The girls and I played with the Terracotta colored clay and that was a disaster. It was so unbelievably messy.

It was simple to form with my hands and when it was starting to dry out on my hands, water easily softened the clay again. It took about two to three days to dry. It really depended on how thick it was. The little bowl on the left took longer than the one on the right.

When they finished drying I put a layer or two of paint on them. DecoArt's Elegant Finish Metallic Paint worked wonderfully on the bowls. It set evenly and isn't tacky. I used the color Rich Espresso. The inside of the bowl on the left was colored in acrylic paint. I watered it down just a little so it wouldn't have a weird rubbery texture that easily came off the bowl.

This was just a project that I wanted to try. I've never made bowls with air-dry clay before but it's something that I'm going to do again in the near future just as a little craft for myself and for some practice until I get better at handling this form of clay. I'm so used to oven-baked clay which isn't always as soft as air-dry clay/paper clay.