After the success of my first air dry clay project, it is time for round two! Another friends birthday was coming up, so I set out to make her a funky set of magnets. She’s a big fan of color and pattern, and one of the first artists that comes to mind who does both of those things very well is Yayoi Kusama.

I have referenced several of her iconic Pumpkin paintings, not to replicate their patterns, but as inspiration for bold color combinations.

The process was the same as the kidney bean dish. I dunked a handful of clay in a cup of water, then sculpted the individual pieces. These took much less time to dry, but took significantly longer to sand. For sanding I’m using a 200 grit sandpaper, because it’s what I already had on hand.

I was trying to only use paint I had on hand, but was never able to achieve a hot pink/magenta color similar to the first reference image. Instead of wasting paint trying to get the right shade, I decided to just buy it.

To be honest, I am not completely happy with how all of the splatters turned out, but am trying to treat this as a lesson in imperfection. Splatters are not perfect by nature!

Now… Here’s where things got kind of scary. After applying 3 coats of glossy mod podge sealer, I flipped the mostly dry pieces over so I could glue magnets to the back. Since that was going to be a really quick task I didn’t think much of it… What I did not take into consideration was that I was flipping them over onto the surface where I had also sprayed the glossy sealer…. and because both were still slightly tacky, a few of the pieces tried to get stuck which resulted in some of the paint peeling off.

The good news is that the plan was always to create multiple sets of magnets. And like I said before, this is a lesson in imperfection.

All in all, I am happy with the results and enjoy having a bit more color added to my own fridge 🙂

Earlier this month my best friend sent me a photo of a ceramic “bean catchall” and I confidently stated that I could made it with air dry clay, paint, and mod podge… or as I called it – modge podge.

Despite having never used air dry clay, I referenced the dimensions of the original (~4.5″ x 7.5″) and got to sculpting. The smaller versions were initially created as a means to test painting methods, but they turned out to be my favorite part of the project.

The internet informed me that air dry clay was prone to cracking so my solution to this was to add a decent amount of water while manipulating the clay. One thing I learned is that air dry clay takes a LONG time to dry… which now that I am typing this out, is probably due to the amount of water I added.

Once the clay was dry I lightly sanded the pieces, wiped them off, then painted them with a couple of coats of off-white acrylic paint.

I initially tried to achieve the dots/drops by slightly diluting a dark brown paint and using a dropper. However, I was never able to get the consistency quite right.. It was either so thick that it created a much too solid blob of paint, or so watery that it ran and pooled in the center of the dish.

Luckily these attempts with the dropper were only made on the smaller test pieces, and before moving on to the larger piece I had settled on just splattering paint on with a brush. I didn’t do anything fancy here, just ran my thumb over the bristles and knocked the brush against the lip of my water cup until I was satisfied with the result.

Since I was unhappy with the methods used on the test pieces, I ended up painting them black and using the off-white paint to create a kind of inverse effect. They remind me of composition notebooks and Harriet The Spy!

After they were all painted, I sprayed them with about 3 coats of glossy mod podge sealer and voila!

I’m not going to lie to you, I have been riding the high of this creative win all week and can’t wait to keep making.