Barbara's Creative Paperclay® Tips for May

Hello everyone, and welcome back.  I hope everyone had a wonderful Memorial Day weekend.

Barbara here, and I have a few tips to share with you that I learned along the way while making my project earlier this month.  This is a picture of what I made in my earlier post this month.  If you missed it, you can click here to see how I made it.

The basket of flowers is all made using Creative Paperclay®.  As you can see, there were lots of tiny bits and pieces to mold and air dry.  So, my first tip is this:

1)  Get a ridged plate, like a microwave bacon cooker, from the dollar store, and place a scrap piece of screen wire on top to dry your clay on.  It works fabulously because this allows air to circulate beneath the clay, as well as on the top.

I also found that these Stampin' Up trays, used to hold alphabet stamps, have ridges that will hold the screen wire up off the bottom, as well.  The lid closes and will keep the dust off. 

 

2)  When you want to work on a piece of Paperclay® that you now need to trim with your craft knife, lay it on a piece of white cardstock.  This will allow you to easily rotate the piece while you work on it without handling it, which could possibly cause it to stretch out of shape.  You can also leave it to dry on the paper and then you can easily move it from your workspace.  This was invaluable to me when I was cutting out the basket I had made.

3)  I also found that, while painting my Paperclay® pieces, if I want to dilute my acrylic paints with water, the water would re-wet the Paperclay®, causing it to lose some of its definition.  However, using an acrylic glazing medium (instead of water) allowed me more time to color my flowers without wetting the Paperclay®.  The glazing medium also made the acrylic paint more translucent and allowed me more time to play with mixing my colors,  again without re-wetting the Paperclay®.

I hope you enjoyed my tips this month, and that you will be able to utilize them in your own projects, perhaps making it easier and more fun to create something using this fabulous product.  I hope you will also take a minute to visit the Creative Paperclay® online store, as well as come back to the blog for more inspiration, tips and techniques from the wonderful Creative Paperclay® designers.

Have a wonderful, creative week!

Barbara