Modeling Clay - Sculpting and Molding Premium Air Dry Clay (25 lb)

This clay is easy to mold or sculpt, holds its shape nicely and dries hard. It is air-dry clay, so it will degrade once dry, but stays nicely for months. Do not get it wet! It will dissolve to mush. Great for classes.

I bought this modeling clay for student use but didn't quite know what to expect as I had never used air-dry clay before. We don't have access to a kiln so this was sort of an experiment,. The students made reliefs at first by using a rolling pin to flatten the clay, then building up and adding forms from there. They came out beautifully. Afterwards some went on to do more three-dimensional forms, which included building up the clay on a base of sculpted aluminum foil. They even stuck small pieces of metal and beads in the sculptures as they wanted. The clay is easy to use right out of the box but a few suggestions on how to get the most from it:1. If, at the end of a modeling session, you don't want to keep particular projects or there are leftover pieces of clay, you can put them in a bowl of water and let sit over night. It will get soft again, even if the clay had previously hardened. The next day you need to wedge the clay really well to get all the lumps out. I did this on a plexiglass board, continually re-scraping the clay to get it into a ball. To make it workable again, you can tear off a small piece and roll it around in your palms to get the extra water out. After about 10 minutes it should be workable again, although if it's still too wet it may need to sit awhile, loosely covered.2. A few students made sculptural forms that cracked overnight. We found the best way to fix them was to work small amounts of wet clay into the cracks, smooth out and let re-dry. That worked in just about every case. Once dry the piece can be gently scraped or sanded to make smooth.3. To build up larger forms, the coil method works very well with this clay. Just note that it can be tricky adding wet clay to partially dried clay. This clay works best when all the pieces are the same consistency. Scoring the pieces with a sharp tool and putting them together with wet clay also helps a lot.4. To preserve a work in progress, we wrapped the wet pieces in plastic wrap, then put them in a plastic bag with a damp paper towel inside. This worked perfectly and the students were able to resume where they had left off.5. Once dry, this clay can be painted with acrylic paint. We added acrylic medium over the paint to give the work a glossy sheen.6. One caveat: you cannot use this clay for functional objects that have liquids in them. Nor can you expect this clay to have the durability of kiln-dry clay. When dry, the pieces tend to be fragile, so I'd recommend this for sculptural use mainly. When you understand the limitations of the product, it's easy and very satisfying to work with.

The clay is super easy to work with. I made sure to build a wire and foil skeleton that I used to build the clay off of. I only had cracking in the wings and tail of my dragon. So while they move when you lift the statue the skeleton holds them in place and they don't actually break off which is nice. I'm starting a gryphon statue next and trying a different position to see if reducing the gravity pull while drying will help prevent the cracking.Update the gryphon still cracked like a lot. And needed multiple days to repair the cracks and let them dry then repair the new cracks and let them dry.So I have done so much stuff to try and avoid the cracking but I finally unlocked the secret! Don't use a skeleton. I just did a solid sculpture of the same gryphon I used a skeleton to do before and there is one teensy tiny barely noticeable cosmetic crack. The down side to making it out of solid clay is it takes a week to dry but it is so worth it as you don't have to spend a week making repairs to the cracks.

This clay is phenomenal to work with! It is so easy to shape, carve and mold! I took pottery class back in my day and it was one of the most fun things I have ever done! One of the best parts about that class was creating our own clay.. I could never get the clay to be as good as the teachers, obviously, he had it down to a T. His clay was always so soft and easy to work with, making your projects turn out way better in the long run when working with his clay that he had made from scratch, it was so smooth soft and slow drying, making it very hard to mess up. This aurora clay that I had purchased I probably what I would consider one of the closets clay products I have yet to find to being similar to my old pottery class teachers! I have been creating new dish sets, bowls, shapes, sculpting, crafting, you name it, I'm most definitely making it with this amazing clay product! I'm also very please for the price I got it at.. compared to some other clays I found while I was on the search to buy some, their prices were ridiculous compared to this one. I'm very thankful to have found this amazing product and to have received speedy fast shipping and a great seller / customer service!

I am absolutely in love, this company immediately has a life long customer. I'm a beginner and there's no instructions or anything you just kinda let you're imagination run wild. I showed a picture of the things I used as tools because I don't own any official sculpting tools. I honestly mostly used my finger. Having a little glass of water helps to smooth things out or connect pieces together. I spent a few hours making these couple pieces, they're all relatively small but i barely used 1/4 of my 5lb bag. I'm excited to see how it drys so i can paint over it! I'll keep you updated c:

I originally bought it because it had good reviews, and I wanted as much of a quality, yet cheap clay that I could find (college student). Needless to say, it definitely delivered just that! For small pieces, it is wonderful, yet for bigger pieces, it was a hassle (although that's probably due to my inexperience, so take it with a grain of salt). Cracking was a big issue for me, so keep a spray bottle handy to make sure it all dries at an even pace. I love this clay, it was super easy to use in my experience, and am ordering my second batch as we speak!