Clay Dragons

I do love the ceramic projects.  I sometimes stress a bit as to whether they will explode in the kiln or not, yet so far I've been pretty lucky.

 

I try and do one ceramic project a term, as many of the children just love working with clay.

I fire the pieces from my after school & Saturday classes yet I just use paper clay for the school and preschool classes.  We add beads, glitter etc and paint them straight away (far less breakages than painting when dry, I've never understood why people wait).  

Paper clay is just normal clay with paper pulp added for strength.  It acts exactly like normal clay and you can fire it.  I like using it as it gives me the choice to fire or not and it's the same price as normal clay.  I find some of the air dry clay is quite expensive.

What you need:

• Paper Clay
• Skewers
• Water
• Underglazes (ones to be fired)
• Clear gloss (ones to be fired only)
• Beads, glitter etc (only for pieces not getting fired)

How to:

• Demonstrate how to make a dragon.  The simplest method is squeeze the clay into a sausage shape with one end thinner (think snake shape).  Then add legs.  Then form a head.  Then add details such as scales, spikes, teeth, horns etc.
• Domonstrate how to scratch and attach all pieces so they don't fall off
• If any parts are thicker than 1 inch either poke a hole in it or hollow out.
• Ones to be fired, paint with underglaze, leave to dry
• Ones not fired - add beads, matchsticks, glitter etc
• Once fired, add layer of clear gloss. (You could also clear glaze here and fire again, I didn't as a few bits were broken and I wanted to glue them on and we were also about to start our big summer break).

The Results:

Love dragons!!!

 

 

     

Cheers

FIONA