Salt Dough Clay? Um, No

A few posts back, I wrote about my experiences with paper clay vs papier mache. The differences, my preference and what I thought worked better. This time I want to talk about something else that I tried a couple months ago and thought I'd put out there since I've heard a lot of different "great" things about salt dough and wanted to give my impression of it.  

Paper clay, the actual brand of paper clay isn't really cheap. It's not the $3 stuff, more like $7 - 9 a package depending on where you buy it. 

Salt dough "clay" is really cheap. Basically made of flour, salt and some water. Oh and you can put a few drops of Dawn dishwashing soap in for supposed antibacterial properties that make the dough not get moldy. Not my recipe but what I've read.

Ok, well I love paper clay first off. I love the smoothness of it, how easy it is to work with and just the mold-ability of it. It doesn't crack after drying, you can sand it, it takes paint well also. Dough clay? Not so much. Really you can't "mold" it. Or at least I couldn't. Now, I've also heard about different recipes, using more salt, less salt, more flour, less flour, certain types of flour, hot water or cold water, more water, less water, you get the idea. I found a recipe on Pinterest that was supposed to be the "end all of all dough clay recipes". Not so much.

I made a small batch to try out for some heart ornaments. I rolled them out on parchment paper and cut out the dough with heart shaped cookie cutters. I baked for many hours at a really low temp. This is supposed to prevent rising and puffing of the dough as well as make it stronger, "like a rock" and not have cracking. Not so much.

If the dough was a bit thicker, like if I didn't roll out too long, these were better. The thinner ones for sure cracked. Like right down the middle crack. No going back on those. I had some success with about 3/4 of the batch. I thought they came out pretty cute actually and I sold quite a few which is good.

Painting. Well painting the dough was definitely not the same as painting clay or paper mache. Look, a flour product is just not meant to be painted whether it's cooked or not. I used a thinned acrylic paint and the brush was rather soft, but when I stroked the color on, I noticed a slight film also going back and forth with the brush. I ended up sort of flooding the color on. The paint was wetting the surface of the flour and I think compromising the integrity of the piece, meaning no longer "the rock" that it was supposed to be, and I think just re-wetting the surface turning it back into glue.

Next I wanted to make something fun! I LOVE vintage trailers. OMG they are a huge, novel passion for me. Oh how I'd love to buy an old canned ham and redo it completely! Anyway, I cut out a rather large canned ham with the leftover dough I had. It probably was about 1/4" thick, maybe a tad less, so it was sturdy. I made some random indentations for doors/windows, a tire and then put it in the oven for a realllllly long time. Slow heat is supposed to harden this baby! After many hours I took it out and let it cool on the Formica counter in the kitchen. 

After it cooled, I noticed it wasn't flat. It had like a dent running vertically. The back had a slight crack. Well hell! I didn't touch it for a couple weeks and I noticed the crack was more pronounced. Since it was just for me and I wasn't going to sell it, I ran a strip of Tacky glue down the crack and let it dry. Again I let it set for another week till I was ready to paint it.

See the crack and the glue?

Cutie patootie!

Using fun, vintage-type colors, I really had fun painting this little trailer! Ok, so it's cracked, dented and all that, it still came out cute I think. Next time, I think I'll use Paper Clay!