Working with air dry clay

OK, here's my experiment with air dry clay. My goal was to make a charm to use as an embellishment for a wall quilt or postcard. I used Hearty's air dry clay. This is a soft clay that is easy to work with and does not need to be baked to cure. It is completely cured in 24 hours. For my charm I chose a sun mold. This mold is a Maureen Carlson flexible mold for use with any polymer clay. First step is to dust your mold with talc or cornstarch which will make releasing your charm from the mold easier. I used baby powder.

Then pull off a piece of clay and roll it between your hands to smooth and soften it...it doesn't take much as it is fairly soft.

Now press it into your mold filling the deepest part first.

Then gently flex the mold to release the charm. I will say, it does take a couple tries to get it out without distorting the image.

Here it is out of the mold. You can see there is a little distortion...each try gets better. Now you can trim the excess clay away and save it for reuse. Remeber though, this is air cured clay, so put it away in an airtight bag or container right away.

This is the charm trimmed. Leave it for 24 hours and it will be cured. At this point if you want a hole to stitch through, take a toothpick or some other tool to make your hole now before it dries.

After 24 hours it is cured and ready to paint. I painted mine with Jacquard Lumiere Halo pink gold.

And it's ready to sew on the project of my choice.

You could also roll this clay out flat and use rubber stamps to make impressions that you can turn into buttons.

And I'm sure there are many other uses too.

I will use this allot!