How to make the paperclay?
Materials:
1. 1 roll tissue paper. Others use shredded paper. I used tissue for availability reasons.
2. Water for soaking
3. 1/4 cup white glue
4. 1/4 cup water
5. Food color or poster color.
6. Hand blender
7. Airtight containers
Procedure:
1. Remove the tissue from the core. Soak the tissue in water.
2. Drain and squeeze the water off.
3. In a bowl, combine 1/4c water and 1/4c glue. Mix well.
4. Put the tissue in the water-glue solution. Using a hand blender, mix until the tissue until it's completely mushy. You may also do this using your bare hands. I just used a blender for faster result.
5. Take a small amount of the mush and put food or poster color of your choice. Mix well and add more tissue or more color to get the desired shade. Take another amount of mush for a different color. It's so exciting to mix colors and experiment with how many shades of color you can make.
Be sure to keep unused paperclay in an airtight container so it won't harden. I use Reynolds zipper bags.
What we did is we printed the chosen design. I put the design on top of the illustration board and traced it with a ballpen. I think it would be easier to use a carbon paper for tracing. Then I traced it with pencil on the illustration board. We reused an old one. I peeled off the white side of the board coz it had been used by Gabe for his project before. See! It's good to reuse and recycle *grin*. Then I drew the design using a marker. And one important thing I realized is to use a permanent marker. My mistake is I used a washable marker. That's why some black marks get mixed to the colored paperclay (Finn's sleeve, bag, etc.) because the paperclay is wet of course. The black marks appear when the paperclay is dried. No matter how careful we were to put paperclay in the between and not touching the lines, black mark still transfers to the paperclay. Now, goodluck to us for the teeth and tiny parts.
Paperclay art practices fine-motor skills for kids. It actually has lots of benefits for kids and adults. Doing it together promotes bonding between parent and child or between sibs. So it's a good homeschool or family activity or project.
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