Air-dry clay is very easy to work with. I think it handles more like real clay than polymer-clays like Sculpey. And you don't have to bake it, just let it dry (a real plus during the summer months).
I also use it to make quick molds and impressions.
I had some white clay (from Polyform) left over from another project, and I don't like to mix partially dried clay back into the main blob. So I decided to press some gears and cogs into the leftover clay to make a quick Steampunk jewelry pendant. With some paint and embellishments, this is a good technique to get a fun surface texture for jewelry.
I thought it would be translucent enough to make a good diffuser for a NeoPixel pendant. But the clay is actually fairly opaque at anything more than a millimeter thickness. That is way too thin to make jewelry with because air-dry clay is brittle and breaks easily (a backer board or thick parts are best for jewelry).
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| You can see that the NeoPixel lights only show through where the clay is very thin. Luckily, the rest of the pendant is thick and makes for a strurdy piece of Steampunk jewelry. |
But I had accidently made some of the impressions from the gear so deep that the light from the NeoPixels shined through quite nicely. A few even poked all the way through. The rest of the piece are very thick however, so the pendant is sturdy. Overall, it creates a nice effect.
I need to paint the surfaces to make it prettier, but somehow leave the indentions unpainted. It might take a few tries to get something attractive. But air-dry clay is cheap and quick to work with. So I can try a lot of different techniques cheaply and quickly.
Also, I know that polymer clays have a wide variety of translucency. And my diffusing experiment with 3d printed NeoPixel jewelry proves that even PLA has different light transmitting qualities. So there might be other air-dry clay brands that work much better with technique. I'll keep you updated.
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