Playing with Paperclay

My first experience with paperclay was about 1-1/2 years ago and, in my opinion, it was a success.  Took me forever to complete the small project but it looked gorgeous!  I made the small "bricked" piece for a friend as a Christmas gift.  Took me 3 nights to paint it.  Found out after the fact (from another friend who

My first attempt at Paperclay.

has actually taken a class and been instructed on how to use paperclay as opposed to me who was just winging it) that I had done it the difficult way: I painted each brick one at a time, including the edges of each brick, then did a dark wash (wiping it away from the tops of the bricks so it would not alter my brick color) to get into the crevices between each brick.  Apparently I was supposed to do the dark wash first to get it into the grout and then the bricks just needed to be touched up with paint to give them some color.  A much faster approach than painting each brick and edges as I did.


But, having had success with paperclay on the smaller project, I used the left-over chunk of it that I had to make the 1795 kitchen floor!  I rolled it out and then stuck it in.  Then realized that it only filled about 1/2 of the room.  I did not know how much time I had before it started to dry out so I quickly rolled out another section and blended it into the first piece.  And still was about 3" x 5" too small.  So another handful of paperclay was plopped into the roombox!  Figured I could roll it out once it was in the room.  Which would have been a great idea if the rolling pin fit in the roombox.  So I used my hand to flatten it as best I could.  It is not as even as I'd have liked, but given it is a 1795 kitchen, they probably had some uneven floors (although not as uneven as mine, I'm sure! LOL).  Then I started creating my bricks . . . .

Drawing in my bricks . . . .

Seeing it like this (with only a few bricks drawn in) makes me think I could use this to make snow banks on another project of mine!  You can see my bumpy uneven parts on the right from the door way to the open end of the room and on the far left as I had to do a touch up spot in that corner where the paperclay was too thin.  The empty space on the floor is where my fireplace goes.  It's so odd seeing the bricks drawn in but all white . . .

Bricks all drawn in and left to dry for a few days.

Next I did the paint wash to fill in my grout lines . . .

Paperclay bricks with just a brown paint wash on them.

Then I painted quickly over the bricks with a burnt sienna color paint, slightly watered down in some spots because I wanted the bricks to look faded/old and very worn.

1795 kitchen floor.

Now I have to tackle some electrical decisions (wire it or use battery operated lights like I did in the other 3 kitchen roomboxes?), decide whether or not to add a window on the left, and then am ready to move on to the walls (stucco white)!