Experiments in Air-Dried Clay

I can’t tell you how long the pack of air dried clay sat on my shelf before I finally opened it and started playing. What took me so long? If you haven’t tried it yet – I definitely recommend air dried clay as a highly therapeutic and fun craft.

I wanted to create some clay beads to act as spacers between the rolled paper beads I’d already made, so started with some simple bead shapes – making big holes in the centre with souflaki sticks.

I like the wonkey, chunkyness of them and although I painted them with several coats of acrylic, and sealed them with a clear varnish, I honestly think I prefer them plain white.

After beads, I graduated to a couple of fish shapes – again the souflaki sticks came in handy to pierce the eyes.

There’s something really delicious about the plain whiteness of these unpainted beads.

My favourite experiments were the small fridge magnets – created on rolled out clay. The first couple were incised… and the next four were painted onto the plain, rolled clay.

I think these designs/products have legs… although I will likely roll the clay a bit thicker when I make the next batch. They’re nice and light, so are good for fridge magnet purposes I think…