| Air Dry Clay for Scrapbooking |
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Create Your Own 3-D Page Embellishments from Scratch |
Air Dry or Paper Clay are perfect for scrapbooking page embellishments. The material is lightweight, the color can be changed as desired and it can be molded, cut, or shaped to fit any number of themes. You can also try rolling out the clay and cutting it with cookie cutters in to shapes or letters. Rubber stamping techniques also combine well with clay. Here is a simple project to get you started, from Christi Brogan.
Supplies Needed:
- A batch of air dry clay, either homemade using the recipe posted below or purchased.
- Heat Gun
- Fun foam (thin or thick, but I prefer thick)
- Scissors
- Deeply etched rubber (not foam) stamp
- Optional: glycerin and vegetable oil spray
Free Recipe - Air Dry Clay for Scrapbookers:
1 cup Cornstarch
2 cup Baking soda
1 1/4 cup Cold water
Instructions:
Sift dry ingredients together into a medium saucepan. Add water. Cook on medium
heat for about 5 minutes or until the mixture thickens and starts to pull away
from the sides of the pan. Remove from heat and dump out onto waxed paper. Once
the clay is cool enough to handle, knead it for at least 5 minutes. Store in an
air tight container or plastic bag. Can be colored with acrylic paints and/or
stamping inks.
Creating 3-D Embellishments:
To started, you'll want to make sure you're using deeply etched rubber stamps (not foam). You'll also want to make sure they're not too detailed, as the more detail the less likely for success with this project. Here are two examples of good stamps to use and one example of one not to use:
Good Stamps - Cat and Paw Print Bad Stamp - Very Detailed Flower
Next, you'll want to cut a piece of fun foam slightly larger than the stamp you'll be using. Now, you can either pin your fun foam to a heat proof surface or hold it with tweezers/tongs for the next part. Using the heat gun, heat the surface of the fun foam until it begins to look grainy or pebbly. If using the thinner foam, it may curl a bit in the heating (which is why I use thick) but don't worry about it as long as you get it hot to the grainy stage. Once it gets to that stage, quickly press your rubber stamp into the hot surface and hold for approximately 10 seconds, making sure to maintain pressure. If you are at all concerned about your stamp sticking (I've never had one stick, but there's always a first time!) use the veggie oil spray to put a light coating on the stamp before impressing it. After the 10 second hold, gently remove from the foam and you should have a good impression in the foam surface. As long as you don't reheat the foam, that impression can be used over and over again. If you are unhappy with the impression, gently heat the surface again and it should disappear.
Here are the two from my example stamps:
Stamped images pressed into white craft foam that has been heated.
Once the foam is cool, you're ready to use the clay. If you used the spray on the stamp, you'll need to clean the foam with a baby wipe or soap and water, being gentle so you do not to ruin your impression. Take a small ball of your clay and press it into the impression, making sure to smooth out the top. I've tinted my clay blue here so you can see it better:
Now, let these dry until the clay is completely dry, about 24-48 hrs in good dry conditions or longer in humid ones. Once dry, gently pop the clay off the foam and trim to desired size. Here is what they'll look like coming out of the mold (these were not dry yet and didn't hold the impression as well, so make sure to let them dry!).
If you've done a good job of smoothing the back side, these should be able to be just attached to the page with glue dots or scrapbook adhesive. You can also paint the images with acrylic paints or pigment inks.
As Janet discovered during our crop, you can also chalk or ink the foam impression itself and use that as a page embellishment if you like. Or you can choose to direct stamp into the air dry clay. If you choose to direct stamp, you can use the glycerin to prevent the stamp from sticking, but use a THIN coating so as not to make the resulting image too "greasy". The glycerin is much less acidic than the oil spray and will be less likely to damage your scrapbook, but still make sure to take care when using anything with an oily base on your pages.
Bonus Tip: Fun foam is great for all kinds of things scrapbook related, from making shakers, to creating your own pop dots to making your own stamps. To make your own stamps, just cut with a die cutter, or print a shape with your printer and cut with a sharp craft knife, then attach with rubber cement to a wood block or with removable adhesive to your acrylic mounts and you've got yourself a custom stamp.
Hope these instructions help you to make some great page embellishments!
