Air-Dry Cold Porcelain Clay- A step by step procedure

While looking for paper mache clay ideas, i stumbled opon Cold Porcelain clay and was quite amused by its varied uses right from crafting flowers to baskets to dolls and many more. After going through most of the videos online about this clay i decided its time to make some at home.

When air- dried the final product has a natural porcelain kind of glow on it, hence the name Cold Porcelain. There are two methods

•  Stove top Method
• Microwave Method

 In this post i will show the first method.

Things you will need:

• Corn Flour ---- 1 cup
• Fevicol SH ----1 cup ( used for woodworking, one can use fevicol MR or Elmer's white glue)
• Baby Oil    ---- 2 Tbs
• Glycerin ---- 1 Tbs
• Synthetic Vinegar / Lime juice --- 1 Tbs
• Water if you glue is too thick
• Ponds / Vaseline Moisturizer
• Non-Stick pan/ Spatula

Things you need

Step:1

• Take the Non-stick pan, Add one cup of fevicol/white glue , 2Tbsp of baby oil, 1Tbsp of  Glycerin and 1Tbps of lime juice/Vinegar. Mix properly.
• Add 1 cup of Corn Flour to the above mixture. Mix them all to get a proper consistency. 
• If the mixture is too thick add little water and mix again properly.

Mix all ingredients thoroughly

 Step 2:

• Keep the pan on the stove in low flame. 
• Keep stirring continuously.The mixture gets clumpy fast so be careful, keep flame low and keep stirring.

Keep stirring continuously

Step 3:

The mixture gets thicker

• The mixture slowly turns thicker and thicker. Keep stirring.

• Within some 8 minutes it would look like a mashed potato and a lump kind of forms at the center. Its time to switch off the flame.

Mashed Potato like consistency

Step 4:

• Add a little moisturizer to your palm and to the table top where you intend to knead the dough.
• Take out the mashed mixture form the pan and keep on the moisturized place.
• Start kneading the mixture , add a little flour if it feels sticky. The key to making good porcelain clay is to knead it until it becomes cool.

Knead the mixture to a dough like consistency

Dust a little corn flour if its sticking around

Cold Porcelain Dough

Step 5:

• Take a clean polythene cover, add a little moisturizer to its interior surface. Roll the clay as shown in above pic and keep it inside the polythene cover.
• Fold the cover properly so that no air is left inside,  Tie the cover with a clip to make it air-tight.
• Store in the Refrigerator for A DAY. 

Step 6:

• To add color to the clay, add a little acrylic or oil color of your choice and knead the dough properly.
• Once you take out the clay from Refrigerator , knead it properly before you make anything out of it, otherwise it would break while drying.
• Sculpt your favorite character or Flowers and let them air-dry for few hours to days depending on the thickness of the form.
• Seal it with a clear acrylic varnish or a glossy Mod-Podge. The forms will be as hard as rock once they are dried. 

TIP 1: Add a little White Tempera paint while mixing all the ingredients, this would give a white color to the clay, otherwise the clay would dry transparent. you can add a color before you put it to use.

TIP 2: Take only that amount of clay you need to make something, keep the remaining in air-tight container, or else the clay dries when exposed to air.

TIP 3: You can add color while kneading the dough immediately after taking the mixture from stove, but colored clay has low shelf life. Its recommended to color before you use the clay.

That's all!!! When i made the first batch of clay, i made some roses, other flowers and leaves. One can master it only after few trials. Do try at home and let me know how did it go in the comments section. 

Till then happy Clay-ing around...