Hi im new to air dry clay. Yesterday I tried making a trinket tray, but today when I tried to pick it up, it cracked (I think I might have added too much water). It wasn’t fixable, so I broke it apart so I could remake it. I added water to soften it again. It was about 40% dry, can it go back to being soft like before if I add water? or is it ruined and i can’t work with it anymore?This is what it looks like after breaking it apart. After adding a few drops of water I can still feel some dry, hard bits in the clay
Most likely yes if you keep adding water and kneading it. (I recommend looking up a video of someone "wedging" clay and trying to copy it)
I would try and get thr clay to a point that's a but too wet for use and then letting it sit in a plastic bag or other air tight container for a day or at least overnight to let any dry parts fully absorb the water
Then wedge the clay again and it should be good!
The vast majority of air dry clays on the market are natural water-based earthen clays with various additives. Thus they can be completely dried out, broken up into small pieces then ground into a powder and reactivated with water.
This is rarely needed unless you're dealing with ceramic clay because you're trying to get a very specific moisture content and internal structure to your clay body. There's all this additional processing where you absorb the excess water out of the clay and then you wedge it to remove air bubbles, lots of work to get a good consistent clay body that's going to survive being fired somewhere in the vicinity of 2000° in a kiln.
Generally all you need to do is dip it in some water or pour a little on top and knead it into the clay.
Paper Mâché clay can be softened with water but you should knead in a bit of PVA glue because you're thinning that binder down, so it won't work quite as well.
Sculptamold is a PM clay made by Amaco that uses plaster as the binder instead of PVA glue so isn't going to reactivate with water, you can break it down and mash into a watery paste but you're going to end up with an inferior product that falls apart.
I'm unaware of any commercial clay that has acrylic polymer as a binder (similar to what is used to make acrylic paints) but if such a product existed it would be waterproof once dry.
I make my own papier-mâché clay with
cellularcellulose insulating materials mixed with Dental Stone and student grade acrylic paint so it is extremely strong and waterproof once set.EDIT: typo
Do you mean cellular (inorganic glass) insulation or cellulose (organic fiber) insulation? Any pictures of the finished product?
Sorry, voice-to-text typo.
Cellulose (plant fiber) insulation is recycled, made mostly from processed newspaper. You have to pick out some bits of cloth/ thread from it and physically tear it up a bit to reduce the clumping. You get a massive bale for about 20 bucks.
Household plastering products are made from beta plaster, but alpha plaster is harder to find but is much more durable. If you add 20% Portland cement (not Quick-crete or other concrete, no aggregate) to plaster you get a dental stone type material. I make monsters for outdoor Halloween displays. A 200 pound person can stand on the head without breaking it.
If you want a material that's highly weatherproof you can use Rapidset Waterproofing Mortar. In papier-mâché clays, changing the binder from a glue to gypsum/limestone products pushes them past a glue into more of a structural material. The paper/cellulose fiber switches from being the structural material to being more of a filler.
When I want something very big, not excessively heavy, strong and can sit out in rain and snow but I don't want to screw around with fiberglass, this is the material.