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.