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| Angelina Jolie |
I like Marblex. Now that I'm done with a sculpture and it's completely dry, I know how hard this stuff is: pretty darn hard. I don't have anything to test breaking points of different materials but I'll tell you what I know. Check out my other article on Marlbex for how it sculpts.
Somebody asked if you could add new clay to dry Marblex. Yes, and it works well. Wet the dry stuff and it gets soft, add the new stuff. It shrinks very little is one reason it works, it doesn't pull away from the layer beneath. I thought this stuff would be easy to sand like paper clay. It's not. With 400 and 600 grit sandpaper I can sand paper clay quickly. Marblex doesn't sand, it burnishes, which is nice; a polished stone-looking texture emerges. It's so hard that the sculpture sanded the sandpaper and tore the grit off. I had better luck with 1500 grit. Seems the smaller grit is just right to burnish the piece without the grit coming off on the sculpture.
Because I thought it would sand easily I didn't worry about getting every blemish and bump out before drying. I used the wet scrubby pad side of a cleaning sponge to smooth out the surface. Problem with that was little bits of the scrubby stuff would come off and get stuck in the wet clay. Gotta find something better and smooth the piece before it dries, save some trouble.
Hey there; I've been looking at different types of clay for working with, and while at Michael's I saw the Marblex and Stonex air dry clays. Can you tell me what the difference between the two are? The packaging didn't really help on that note, and I wanted to get the one best suited for my project (I had heard you could use stone clay to make ball jointed dolls, and was curious to try it out)
ReplyDeleteI wrote some other stuff on those if you look around. My first experience with Stonex was not good, it was like sculpting marshmallow creme. I liked the Marblex better, but now I'm not so sure. I bought some more Stonex and perhaps my first experience was with clay that was too wet. I bought a box I haven't used and just went and checked it, it's not gooey. Has texture like Marblex, but I'd use the Stonex. Marblex has sand sized grains in it. Not good for sanding parts down like you'd probably do for BJDs. Stonex would probably work for BJDs, I would try it. I like it better than all the paper clays I tried.
DeleteI recently picked up marblex cuz my kiln isnt set up yet but im curious, how long is it workable for? And what is a guesstimate of how lobg it takes to fully cure? Awesome work btw. Beautiful pieces.
ReplyDeleteThanks. It's workable as long as you keep it covered and wet. As for the sanding, I found there is little bits of stone, just sand size, but it doesn't sand without exposing those. Stonex might be better. I really need to try Stonex again. I have some that doesn't seem to be gooey like when I tried it before. Comes out whiter also. As for hardness, still breaks like clay, maybe a little stronger. Full cure, depends on how thick it is, a couple of weeks to a month.
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