How I Fixed Air-Dry Clay Bowls After a Disaster!

Sometimes I have a vision in my mind for a craft project, and sometimes ...it does not go at all to plan :( This usually happens when I'm trying a new technique or I'm using a material I'm not used to - and that's what happened here. This was the first time I'd used air-clay, and it turns out it's a lot different to polymer clays that I have used before.

I aimed to make a couple of bowls, thinking that would be super quick and simple, but alas no!

I was aware the air-dry clay would shrink, but I wasn't ready for just how much and how quickly...so this Instructable is just about how I tried to turn a disaster around and fix the many problems :)

My method of fixing the bowls was inspired by the Japanese art of Kintsugi, where imperfections are highlighted.

- Air-Dry Clay:I used a 1kg pack of terracotta modelling clay.

- Plastic Container of Water

- Acrylic Paints

- Clear Fast-Drying Glue: I used UHU all-purpose adhesive.

- Metallic Acrylic Paint (or Mica Powder)

- Paintbrushes

- Permanent (Paint) Markers

- Items to Use to Mould the Clay: I used a tin and a glass bowl.

- Clingfilm

- Knitting Needle/Skewer/Awl

- Cocktail Sticks

I started my project by covering the base of a tin and a glass bowl with clingfilm (plastic wrap), as the plan was to use these as moulds for the clay - and then after a couple of hours, once they had partially dried, I would remove them and leave them to completely dry.

The clay was very nice to use and was easy to mould, so I simply placed a circle of the clay onto the base of the glass bowl.

I then shaped it into a bowl shape, added a 'ring' shape to the base, added 3 holes using a knitting needle, and then thinned out the clay by pushing it down the side of the bowl.

I used a little water on my fingers to smooth the surface of the clay as I went.

For the tin mould, I first placed a circle of clay over the end of the tin, then I built up a ring around the edge, and 'scored' into the clay ring around the outside to give some roughness that the next piece of clay can grip to.

I then added a little water to the ring and attached a flat strip around the outside.

This clay was all smoothed together and thinned out on the sides, before 3 holes were added in the base.

Just like the previous bowl, I left this to dry for a couple of hours.

I thought that leaving the clay for only a couple of hours would mean that it wouldn't have shrunk enough to cause a problem yet. How wrong I was!

I was pretty disappointed at this point, so I left the clay on the moulds to completely dry.

Once the clay had dried, I removed the bowls from the moulds in as few pieces as possible.

Ideally, you want to break the bowls into few large pieces rather than many smaller pieces. Try and arrange the pieces you remove in a way that let's you know how they'll fit back together again.

To fix the bowls, I first made sure that the pieces could go back together along the seam lines - it's important to know they'll fit back together before adding the glue! In a couple of cases I had to smooth a rough edge, and with the flat-bottomed bowl I couldn't make the sides come together so I decided to overlap one edge over the other.

I then put some of my clear all-purpose glue onto a piece of parchment paper that was protecting my work surface, and mixed a small amount of gold acrylic paint into it using a cocktail stick. If you have mica powder, you might get a more metallic look mixing that in instead.

I then used this glue to join the pieces together. Or at least, I started to do that then decided to just use glue straight from the tube to make it easier!

Iwanted the break lines to be raised - because I thought that would be more effective and easier to paint later on - so I then applied the gold-paint-and-glue mix on the outside of the lines too.

I initially painted one bowl pink and painted the break lines silver (using acrylic paints), but as you'll see in the next step, dark purple against gold lines looks a whole lot better :)

For the flat-bottomed bowl, I painted the outside metallic silver and really liked the look of the silver over the break lines because it made them look almost like welded joins. And the inside I painted blue.

It turns out it was a bit pointless mixing the paint into the glue earlier, because I ended up painting over the glued lines at this point anyway, oops! The glued lines just weren't gold enough, so I painted over them with gold paint straight from the tube.

I really like the look of the purple with the gold lines though - just about saved from disaster I think :)

And for the upper edge of the bowl, I outlined it using a gold paint marker.

To finish this bowl off, I added 'joins and rivets' to the outside using a black Sharpie, and scratched simple sea creatures into the inside surface using an awl.

I guess the concept ended up being 'metal fish bowl' :D