Thursday, June 21, 2012

My Crafty Summer - Day 4 - Cold Porcelain

Today I tried out a new medium: Cold porcelain.  Though it's called porcelain, it's really a kind of air dry clay.  I had found out that cold porcelain is a great alternative to polymer clay when you want something to be white and dust/lint free.  For some reason, dust is a big problem at my work surface, and I figure it has something to do with constant interruptions leading me to touch clothing or other cloth materials before I go back to work.  I try to be vigilant with keeping my hands and my surfaces clean but I go into a panic whenever I have to work with white.

 Let me start by saying I love the stuff.  It's really an odd, sticky medium at first, but it molds and dries easily.   It truly is dust/lint free and all it takes is a little bit of water to fix mistakes.  The pieces end up silky smooth and beautiful.  However, I made a few errors right off the bat.  I knew cold porcelain was translucent so I thought I would just paint the pieces once they dried.  I don't know if I needed more time for the piece to dry, or whether I needed to do something to smooth it more, or even if I used bad paint but the painted piece looked TERRIBLE.   So I made a Hello Kitty and added paint to the wet cold porcelain and it worked beautifully.  Unfortunately I made mistake number two by not allowing the porcelain to dry enough before painting so you might notice that Hello Kitty has a cleft chin thanks to my fingernail (and I appear to be incapable of drawing her whiskers evenly).  Hopefully third time is the charm, but I think I'll use this guy to make a clip for Lauren.

Today I also came to a couple conclusions.  First of all, I need a new camera.  A good camera.  My point and click just isn't cutting it anymore and I ended up having to take these with my phone in order to get them into focus.  Secondly, I don't mean to punk out this early in the game, but I think I'm going to have to make weekends optional for this project.  I intend to craft those days, but I have so many things coming up, it might not be possible.  So weekend projects will be called "bonus projects".  Besides, I'm sure the two people who actually look at these blog posts wouldn't mind a rest from my ramblings!




My Melody made with polymer clay and cold porcelain


Translucent HK and Cleft Chin HK
The painted skull looks so much worse than it would if I had just mixed white paint before molding.
The cold porcelain pieces before painting

2 comments:

Regi said...

Cleft chin HK is adorable. =D

Unknown said...

I honestly have to agree, which is why she'll be forever attached to a hair clip for Lauren. :)