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 🙂