Trying something new for the new year

 It's my first post of the new year for The Artistic Stamper Creative Team, and I wanted to try something new. So I had a play with air drying clay. 

 I shaped the skull and upper body from air drying clay. Air drying clay feels very different to normal clay and much closer to paper clay. The biggest difference I found to normal clay was that it was much harder to join pieces together and to make it nice and smooth. It was my first try so with practice I am hoping the joining and smoothing will get easier, as well as my very, very basic sculpting skills. The lower body came from my sofa which unfortunately met with an accident over the Christmas holiday ( I am all for recycling/ upcycling) 

While waiting for that to dry, I laid out several strips of masking tape onto one of my glass mats. After painting a coat of PaperArtsys French Roast over the top, I took the Randon Dots stamps and stamped randomly with Eggplant, and white paints. After that dried I decided to go over the top with the same stamp and black Archival ink.

Once the clay was dry, I painted the body and skull with base layers of eggplant, white and black paint.

I then repainted the skull and body with the same colours, before giving the girl some hair and a hat made from air drying clay.

 I then painted the hair with PaperArtsy French Roast and the hat with eggplant. I also painted white spots on the hat and top with white paint using the end of a paint brush. I used a black paint pen to make dots on the skull.

Once the masking tape was dry I glued them individually to the base using gel medium, I then stamped on the ribbon with Archival ink and the Random Dot stamp before gluing and wrapping the ribbon around the middle section.

I had fun with this, it's great to try something new. If you haven't ever entered the monthly challenge before, maybe that can be your something new for the new year. This month's theme is anything goes, I have loved looking at the entries so far 

Gemma x

Products from The Artistic Stamper

Random Dots Stamp

French Roast Paint

Black Archival Ink