Air Dry Clay Alternative - Waterproof DIY Garden Sculpture IDEAS - Pal Tiya Premium FACE SCULPTURE

Airdry clay is a fantastic craft medium. I love to use it. I encourage my friends and family to join me in lots of my projects and I encourage you to do the same. So I really hope to inspire you with my videos and I have lots of airdry clay videos over here on my channel and I have a really great project to share with you today. For today's video I wanted to create some kind of sculpture I looked through some inspiration on Pinterest and decided on a sculpture of a face. As this is a sculpture for my garden for all weathers it needs to be fully waterproof and I'll show you the perfect way later. First of all I'm going to create a base for my sculpture out of a box and some tinfoil. Any heavy cardboard will do and I draw my basic design out and I can cut this to size. I'd like my sculpture to have a hint of age to it and so I'm not doing it as a full face but doing it as if it's broken apart over time. But you can do any design and shape sculpture that you wish using these basic principles. Here you can see me shaping the cardboard slightly and adding some tape to keep it in place. On this base structure of cardboard we can add some structural lines so we know where we're going to add all of our features and this just gives us a rough guide. As my piece is curved and while I'm working on it I add some cushioning underneath to keep its shape. To give some more shape and body to our design we can add tinfoil. There's two sides to the tinfoil we use the not so shiny side facing outwards and here I've rolled it in a nice coil not scrunching too tightly leaving it nice and loose. We can then attach all these sections using hot glue. I carry on rolling and sculpting the tinfoil into all the shapes that I require. Use some pictures for some reference or if you're doing a face like I am you could always look in the mirror. Think of the design that you want to create and break it down into all the simple basic shapes and then you can create all the pieces you need from there. This is really a lot of fun and I really am enjoying this part of the process. As you add the tinfoil design don't forget to not add too much as there will be some clay over the top of this. Keep taking a look at your design from all angles. As for the nose we need to add some more to the point of the nose and keep building your design up in this way adding hot glue and attaching this all in place. Don't worry if you think this is starting to look really quite strange don't forget this is the base structure as all of our clay or clay alternative is going to be on top of this. As none of the tinfoil or cardboard will be seen this just creates your basic shape. As you know I absolutely love my air dry clay and use it for many projects and we could cover this in air dry clay but it would crack and you would need to fix those cracks but I've got a different material that I'm going to add over the top of this which is also very like air dry clay that requires no kiln no baking just curing and drying just like air dry clay. If you want to make a face garden sculpture like I am you can make it as abstract or lifelike as you wish. I keep adding the details with the scrunched up tinfoil here building up the cheekbones and the cheeks. Try to build up all areas as much as needed and don't forget the clay or clay substitute will be going over the top of this. As you work away don't be afraid to change your plan. I think I've got a bit too big of a chin area here so I'm taking the scissors and I'm rounding off my chin area. So nothing is set in stone just yet but later on we are going to have that really lovely stone finish. Once you have the basic design in place I like to fold over my tinfoil into thirds and then I'm going to cover the entire area to make sure none of the cardboard is exposed. I'm going to cover it all in the tinfoil gluing everything in place with the hot glue. As you do this you'll be able to see your design come together and all look nice and uniform in the tinfoil. You can work on any style or design sculpture of your choice just follow these basic principles and create your tinfoil structure. I forgot to add the chin in but no worries we can add this in now. When I layer up the tinfoil I just make sure I scrunch it up first and then fold it into my thirds and that way we have a little bit more for our top layer to grip hold of. Keep hot gluing it down until you have your finished piece in tinfoil just like this and I'm really pleased with how this has turned out so far. Once fully covered with the tinfoil you can assess the whole design and see if you have any missing bits or any gaps or any lumps that need changing. Here above the lip it needs plumping out a little more and so I'm just going to add in the tinfoil over the top like this gluing it in place. I'm going to be using a fantastic product Paltire Premium to sculpt and to finish this garden sculpture. It's a lovely clay-like material to use and we're going to use it pretty much in the same way. So what I do is place it down and I'm squeezing it and pressing it down onto my tinfoil. I use it in small batches at a time and work in one area at a time adding more of the product and smoothing it together. I always make sure I use gloves when using this as it can dry out the hands really quite a lot. Smooth and sculpt the clay to a few millimetres in thickness. I like to work on a small section at a time and this size is big enough for me. Once I have plenty of clay smoothed over like this and I'm happy with it we then need to scratch into the Paltire and therefore this first coating is called a scratch coat. The easiest way to do this is with a simple fork. Make clear and deep furrows into the surface like this. The furrows should have deep vertical walls. This will then allow the next layer to bond perfectly. So don't worry what this scratch coat layer looks like too much as long as it has the correct contours we can add some more at a later date. Once this section has all the furrows I cover it over with a little bit of plastic sheet. This helps to keep the moisture in as at this stage we don't want it to dry out. While this section is under the plastic sheet I can move on and add to the rest of the sculpture in exactly the same way. Smooth Paltire all over it and then go over with a fork to scratch coat. If you've not heard of Paltire Premium before it's an absolutely fantastic craft medium and I absolutely love using it and I hope you can see that we're going to get some fantastic results with this. I've added a bit of cushion underneath to help with the shape of my sculpture and to keep that face round. Once the whole scratch coat layer is complete we can cover it with a plastic bag or some plastic so that it stays nice and moist within there and we do this for 24 hours. Let me tell you a little bit more about the Paltire Premium. It comes in a packet like this in a powder form. It has lots of little fibers in there and what we need to do is make five parts of the powder and one part of the water and all we have to do is add these together. Make sure you're wearing gloves and cover all surfaces and you can either get your hand in there and mix or I like to just use a stick or a pencil to get the most of that together and you want five parts of the powder to one part water and that makes the perfect mixture. So it really is quite easy. With our gloved hand we can take this out and knead the product so you can see it's very much like a clay but it is a Paltire Premium and it's a concrete base and can go outside in all weathers and it really is fantastic. Make the product into a wedge shape, give it a wiggle and this is the correct consistency. If it falls off it's too dry, if it looks a lot wetter than this then it's too wet and you just need to adjust it ever so slightly and it doesn't take much. 24 hours later I unwrap my sculpture and I have a water bottle on hand to mist over a light mist of water over the top of my sculpture and now I'm going in with my final coat of the clay, the Paltire Premium. It's not technically a clay but I like to call it a clay. I found myself a tighter fitting pair of gloves and you know this works so much better than the looser ones. You can really get in there and mould and sculpt with the medium so much easier. Smooth and squish the clay into all those grooves. You can use a fork to help you really press that in place and then we can go over the top and smooth this out once more. It really is a fun and very creative process. I mainly like to use my hands when I'm sculpting but you can use something as simple as a spoon to smooth this out. At this stage we can really start to sculpt and shape our design. If you need to go thicker with the product then add more on top and smooth this as you go. The pots that you see there and the amount that you saw me make just earlier, that's how much I make each time and then I use this and then make some more. I find if I make too much more than this it dries out too much before I'm ready to use it. When adding the fresh product in like this keep smoothing it in and smooth it in to the clay that's already there. These areas I want nice and smooth so I'm smoothing them out but I would like some details and the slits of the eyes so I'm taking the end of the spoon and marking these marks in with the spoon and you can do lots of designs and lots of features using anything you can find around the house to help you make those marks. I'm going for a really simple design here because I like simple and effective but you can add as much detail as you wish and go as elaborate as you wish. I'd like this to have a stone textured effect to it so I'm taking my glove and adding some texture in like that. You could use a brush and give it a stippled effect or absolutely anything you wish. I'm happy with the basic shape of the eyes so I'm now moving on to the nose and using both hands to smooth symmetrically in place. We have about a 15 minute time window to use the Paltire Premium for what they call the super plastic state. It then begins to firm up and we have about two hours to be able to add all the little details we require. As this sculpture is over a foot in size it needs to be between six and ten millimeters in thickness all over. You can of course go thicker but you wouldn't want it to be any thinner than that. So six to ten millimeters for the scratch coat and the top coat combined. Larger sculptures over three foot need to be at least 18 millimeters thickness but if you'd like to start off with a small hand-sized sculpture it only actually needs to be three millimeters in thickness and with that small sculpture you wouldn't need to do the scratch coat. So if you think about it by the time you do a small sculpture and it's full of tinfoil you really don't need very much of the Paltire Premium and you can really make a packet of that really stretch quite far. And for this project I just used just less than two packets of the Paltire Premium. My sculptures coming together really lovely now but I'm ready to take a break so I need to cover in wet towels the scratch coat. So I add these over here they're damp cloths and then I'm going to wrap the whole piece up until I'm ready to come back and do some more. It's a real bonus that this is possible and that you don't need to do everything in one sitting. And then when I'm ready to do some more I can unwrap, take the cloths off and give a light mist of water and then mix some more of the Paltire Premium and carry on. Let me know in the comments below what kind of sculpture you'd like to make, whether you'd like to make something for the garden or for your home. I think this could look good in either. If you're enjoying this video please give it a like by clicking below and if you've not already subscribed please do subscribe to my channel for lots more creative videos. As you can see here I'm not going around the edge of tinfoil I'm just going up to the edge. Wherever you feel you need to add more of the product and more detail just add some more like this and build the features up where necessary. Always make sure you keep going back to reference. I found the lips really hard so I just found some photos of some statues of the lips and tried to copy those as best as I could. I did find the lips really quite tricky. I really enjoyed the nose and the eyes and I got them right pretty much first time but the lips are that little bit more tricky. I think I almost have the design how I want it now and I'm dabbing a little extra texture onto the surface. Once you're happy with the design you can wrap it in a plastic bag or wrap plastic over it like this as we did before for 24 hours. After the 24 hours I can unwrap the sculpture and now I have quite a damp towel and I'm placing this all over the sculpture and then I wrap this in the plastic once again and we want to leave this for maybe about five days and then I take this off and have a look to see how it's going. The paltaya wants to be kept nice and moist to begin with as that's how the crystals form to make it a really really lovely strong structure but in the meantime I can take away all of the backing and the tin foil. You can scrape all of the tin foil away with a knife if you need to. I then wrap this all back up again and leave it for a few more days. Ideally you want to leave your piece for 28 days to cure completely. Paltaya Premium is such a fantastic craft medium and I'm so happy that I could make something that's fully weatherproof and I can go outside in my garden and it really is quite like air dry clay in that we don't need a kiln and we don't need anything special other than to create a design and let it cure. Even though I love this out in the garden, I also think it looks really lovely in my home as well. You can also paint these sculptures with masonry paint. I really hope you enjoyed that project as much as I did and come and see the rest of my videos too. Thank you for watching and I'll see you in the next one.