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Paper Clay Recipe

As promised- the paper clay recipe from the website passed along to me-

http://ultimatepapermache.com/paper-mache-clay

This was the most fun I've had at 'cooking' in awhile. My family thought I was insane! The first batch I did strictly by the recipe.


If you can't read this - I don't know how to link to websites and all that fancy stuff- Chinamommy is supposed to come and help me with that and help me set up an Etsy store but she's as hard to pin down as a wisp of smoke- or maybe that's me and yes, I am the queen of the run on sentence- then go to the website which has tons of other great info.


I thought it was a bit lumpy and I have a problem with thinking I know everything so I added a bit more of this and a bit more of that. This is usually where my cooking goes wrong. I wanted the paper fibers to be shorter or finer? I guess I was looking for it to be exactly like creative paper clay and it wasn't.



So next I tried dissolving the toilet paper in a big pan of water over the stove, gently warming it and then I let it sit thinking it would take up more water and dissolve better. It did get 'fluffier?" Then I put it in a dish strainer and pressed as much water out of it as I could. It was kind of a trade off for cutting it up into 1" bits. I think it was still more wet than the original way so I added more flour and more drywall mud than the recipe called for. I did not increase the oil by very much- you can tell if it is sticking to your hands you need a little more. Finally I decided I surely must have ruined it and by now I had enough to fill a cake pan. I put it in the fridge and left it a day to set up.

When I did use it on my sculpture I was pleasantly surprised by it. It acts differently than the brand name product but I adapted. It dried hard and while it doesn't sand up quite as smoothly as the brand name clay I think it has its own nice texture to it.

I believe that I will use this for the bulk of my project and do a final skim coat of the brand name clay over top of that. I'm working on a big piece and am looking for ways to save money and the hassle of buying tiny little bricks. Its worth a try anyways- the materials were about 15$ and those first two batches made about 4 or more bricks worth. I still have enough materials to make bunches more. Whew! Betcha didn't think you'd have to read a novel!

Comments

  1. if you click on the recipe, it comes up bigger, or it did on my computer anyway!
    hard to pin down... that is YOU, my darling!!!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Christine, thanks for posting this information. If I ever get ambitious enough to mix up my own paper mache recipe, I'll definitely try it. I'm not much of a cook, so it might take time before I attempt this recipe.

    Have a great week.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Christine... Thank you for sharing your well-wishes and (very) kind words at Woodstown Whimsies! I can't wait for the winter issue to come out... Daryle

    ReplyDelete
  4. Christine, thank you so much for this! I have trouble finding paperclay here and this looks like a great recipe.

    Hugs

    ReplyDelete

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