Paperclay Birdies

I thought that I would update you on the Paperclay birdies that I made a couple of weeks ago.

I needed a few small birds for a piece of artwork that I was planning. I decided that the easiest thing to do would be to create them myself.

It was easy but potentially addictive.

First I created the birds by hand.

Plain white birds - like tiny soldiers waiting for their marching orders.

Some of them have perfectly formed eyes & beaks...
others do not.

The largest one is about 1/2" long

I was distracted by several other things (bronchitis and flu to name a couple) so it took me a couple of weeks to get to the next step.

Oh look, someone was watching us! 

I coated the birds with a little bit of Soft Gel to seal them.
Then I used a little bit of acrylic paint in a brown color to rub into the lines on the birds (eyes, wings, etc).
This has to dry completely before you paint the final color.

The bird on the left was created from Crayola Model Magic.
It doesn't firm up the way that Paperclay does.

Sitting there waiting on the next layer of paint.

When the paint has dried completely, I used a small paintbrush to apply the top layer of paint.

Some of them are a cream color, some are brown, some are blue. This step could be done by finger-painting as well.

Little Bird Family

 I used a tiny bit of orange to paint the beaks.
After all of this had dried, I went back and added more brown to the line work as needed.
If you click on the photos to enlarge them, you will be able to see how the brown paint settled into the uneven surface of the bird.
It creates a lovely antique look to the surface of the bird making them appear to be decades older than what they are.

Made from Paperclay

Mommy is keeping an eye on her babies

See how tiny they are?!

The Paperclay is not expensive at all.
It's a fun and easy activity to do that requires very little materials and not a lot of time.
I'd love to see what you do with it!