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!
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| My Melody made with polymer clay and cold porcelain |
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| Translucent HK and Cleft Chin HK |
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| The painted skull looks so much worse than it would if I had just mixed white paint before molding. |
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| The cold porcelain pieces before painting |
2 comments:
Cleft chin HK is adorable. =D
I honestly have to agree, which is why she'll be forever attached to a hair clip for Lauren. :)
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