Handmade Paint Palettes with Air-Dry Clay

Growing up I had many in my family who were clay/tile artists, but sadly that talent I do not count as one of my own. It's something I would love to learn and get better at, but in the meantime, I had fun playing with Air-Dry Clay and making some fun paint palettes of my own.

I ordered some Air-Dry clay. There were a couple different brands, you can even get the kind that you bake in the oven.

The downside of the Air-Dry Clay was how quickly it started to dry making it hard to mold. So I kept a small glass of water next to me and would keep my fingers damp as I molded the clay. Despite it drying while I was working with it...the overall dry time was a couple of days. So if you don't have that kind of time, I would consider getting an oven bake clay. And one thing I didn't do was put pressure on the palettes while they were drying and I found that they curled a bit. So next time I would definitely weigh down the palettes to prevent that.

Step 1: Mold clay into palette shape (here's the clay I used)

Step 2: Let dry (or bake if you purchased the oven bake clay)

Step 3: Paint with acrylic paint (I chose to use Liquitex Basic white acrylic paint). I used 3 coats of paint.

Step 4: Use a glossy varnish to seal the palette. (I used Liquitex Professional Gloss Varnish)

Step 5: Use with Acrylic, Watercolor, or Gouache Paint