New Colour of Cellulose Clay

 As mentioned in the last post, Das/Prang air-dry clay has a new colour, Stone. I bought it thinking it was the white clay. Anyway, I find that I like this colour for certain applications, and the photo below shows the clay freshly applied to the wall on the hall side of the wooden shoe factory:

It is quite dark when it is fresh from the package, but as you can see in the photo below, it dries to a nice concrete colour:

I can see using this to represent cement and concrete in mini structures in the future. For the klompenmakerij, it will form a very good, slightly dirty background for the walls of the wooden shoe manufactory. Das/Prang has been used extensively in my structures over the years. Usually, I apply it directly to walls and floors, over a thin coat of wood glue; as it is a cellulose product, this is the best glue to use for it. In my house, the clay usually dries overnight hard enough to sand and paint the next day.

In case you haven't used this product before, it comes in two sizes of bricks, and in white, terra cotta and now stone. I use battens taped to my surface to dictate the thickness of the finished slab of clay, and a marble pastry roller to flatten it out, on a piece of wax paper, which makes it much easier to lift and place on the surfaces. Aside from walls and floors, I've also used it successfully to make brick slips and tiles, which I allow to dry under weights (heavy art textbooks!) between pieces of wax paper and plastic wrap. This takes longer than drying it on the surfaces themselves, of course, more like 48 hours depending on the amount of moisture in the air. However, these days I usually apply it directly to the surfaces to be stuccoed, bricked or cemented.

The brick walls of the Tudor Apothecary and Workshop were applied directly to the MDF base with wood glue, and the bricks inscribed in situ. The tile floor in the workshop was dried under weights, then cut and glued to the MDF floor. Two or three thin coats of matte, outdoor varnish waterproofed the clay tiles enough that I could use spackle compound for grout. The spackle was then tinted after it had dried.