- Hi, I'm Jonni from
UltimatePaperMache.com and I decided it's about time
that I put out a new video about my original paper mache clay recipe. This is the same recipe that
I used for all the projects in my book, "Make Animal
Sculptures with Paper Mache Clay." The recipe itself went online on YouTube for the very first time,
10 years ago, I think and a lot of people have used
it all over the world now. A lot of other YouTubers
have come up with variations and I've come up with
a few variations too. Someone recently asked me,
which of those variations is my favorite and it's still this one, the very original recipe that
I came up with 10 years ago. It dries really hard. You can put on a really thin,
almost paper thin layer, like I did for the elephant
and the lion back here and it still is really really strong. It replaces the traditional
paper strips and paste. Now of course, over the years, I've answered a whole lot of questions from people who have
used the paper mache clay or who are thinking about
it, but aren't quite sure what is this stuff or
why doesn't that work? I'm going to try to answer all of those questions in this video. So now let's go ahead and
make some paper mache clay, it's really easy. To make your paper mache clay, you're going to need a couple
of large bowls, a spoon, some cups to measure with
and an electric mixer. The materials that go
into the paper mache clay are Elmer's Glue-All or Elmer's Clear. This is a PVA glue. So if you live in another
country, that's what you ask for, is just a white glue or PVA glue. You'll need some drywall joint compound from the hardware store or
Walmart, that's where I get mine. If you're not sure what
drywall joint compound is, I'll tell you that in just a minute. You'll need some white flour and you'll need some toilet paper. Now, the original recipe
does call for two tablespoons of either, mineral oil or linseed oil and I didn't happen to have any today, so I just left it out. It really doesn't hurt anything, so don't go out and buy some special if you don't have any on hand. Now the first thing we need
to do is get our paper ready. I use toilet paper exclusively, in part because I'm really lazy. Just as soon as it gets
wet, the fibers fall apart and that's what we really
want for a nice smooth clay. What some people have
done is soak newspapers for a much longer time,
they soak it in hot water for maybe an hour or two and then, they put the wet newspaper
and the water into a blender. Make sure that there's water in there, so you don't burn out the
motor and they just blend it up and that will break apart
the fibers of recycled paper. So that does work. I don't happen to do it
because like I said, I'm lazy and toilet paper works really really easy but we do want to measure it. We want about a cup and
a quarter of wet paper. So I stick the paper in water, get it wet, press it down into a measuring cup until I get about a
cup and a quarter of it and then I go ahead and put
it back in the hot water. I want all those fibers to be separated. Just swirl it around with your
fingers and make that happen. Now, we don't want
totally totally wet paper in our paper mache clay, so we do need to get
some of the water out. In fact, we want most of the water out, but you have to be really careful that you don't press out too much. That can be a real problem. If you press out so much of
the water that it's almost dry, it won't fall apart
when you run your mixer, you'll end up with big globs and bumpy lumps in your paper mache clay. So go ahead and test it in your hand. Can you push it around
and have it come apart, even though most of the
water has been pressed out, then you're good to go. Next, we need to add some
drywall joint compound. Drywall joint compound is made
for the construction industry and it's used to cover
the the edges between two sheets of drywall or
gypsum board, sheetrock, there's a lot of different names for it. Now, if you live in a
country where they don't make flat walls like this out of
plaster board or drywall, then you won't be able to
find drywall joint compound in your stores and you'll have to just use traditional paper mache. A lot of people ask me, can
you make paper mache clay without drywall joint compound? The answer to that is no,
but you can make paper mache, just mushed up paper mixed
with a glue or paste. That's traditional paper mache, but you can't make paper mache clay without the drywall joint compound. Hopefully that makes sense. There's one company, the DAP Company, that puts something in their formula that just doesn't work with the glue. It just turns into little rubbery balls, it doesn't work at all. So use any other brand
of drywall joint compound and the brand I use is from Walmart. We want one cup of the
drywall joint compound. We want three quarters of
a cup of Elmer's Glue-All. Mix it on high. Keep mixing for several minutes because you really want the mixer to tear all of the paper fibers apart,
so it'll be nice and smooth and then you start adding your flour. You're going to use the flour
to make the mixture stiffer and this is when you get to
decide how stiff you want it. For instance, if you
want a really thin layer, like I use when I'm
covering my mass patterns or when I want to create
a hard solid surface when my first layer, I'll use
a really small amount of flour to make a really thin mixture
of the paper mache clay, but when I want to add texture or if I want to actually sculpt
with the paper mache clay, like I did with my owl,
then I'll add more flour. I can mix mine using my really
cheap little mixer here. I think it cost me 12 bucks. I mix it up to the point where it has half a cup of flour in there, but when I want more than that, I'll switch out the beaters
to the kneading beaters, I think they're the bread mixing beaters. Some mixtures don't have
those but if you do have them, it makes it a lot easier
if you have a lot of flour in the mixture because if you don't, the paper mache clay has
a tendency to kind of crawl up the beaters and gets
on the inside of your mixer, which is kind of a pain
in the rear to get out. So switch it over if you can. By this point, it might also be possible, simply to mix it in by hand, although that's not going to be easy. This is how I normally use it. I will just use a knife and spread it thinly over my armature. It will dry really hard, even if you only have an
eighth of an inch on there, so you don't need a whole bunch. Now one thing you do
want to do, of course, is to make sure that your
sculpture dries as fast as possible after you've got
your form completely covered and you can do that easiest if
you put it in front of a fan or if well, like right now,
my furnace is going on, so I can just put my
paper mache clay sculpture right over a furnace vent. If you want it to be even warmer in there, you can actually create,
like a convection oven by putting a cardboard box
in front of your furnace vent and put your paper mache
clay sculpture in there. If you don't use up all
of your paper mache clay, you can keep it very
tightly covered with plastic for a couple of days. If you want to keep it for like a week, go ahead and put it in the refrigerator and if you need to keep it longer, just put it in a container
with a really tight lid and put it in the freezer. Now I do want to mention that because I invented this
stuff 10 years ago, I've got, well probably two
or three hundred projects out on my website at
UltimatePaperMache.com that uses paper mache clay, so make sure that you go check those out. I've also got a lot of
projects on YouTube, mass, animal sculptures, you name it, they're right here on my
channel at Ultimate Paper Mache. So be sure that you subscribe. Hit the bell thingy, so you don't miss the next one coming up. That's going to be real soon. I've got one that I think
is going to be really fun. Now like I said, there are two variations of this recipe that I have online. One of them is the paper
mache clay without flour and the other one is the silky
smooth air-dry clay recipe. So go ahead and click one of those if you'd like to see how those work. Then, go make something
and come back and visit me at UltimatePaperMache.com,
I'll see you there.
