Pink Panda Review: Floree clay molds & Padico Mermaid Puffy lightweight air dry clay (Chocolate color)

Hi again~
Feel like extra productive this weekend! Today I want to talk about 2 molds and a pack of clay that I've got for awhile now.... lol Finally I have time to talk about them~!

Padico Mermaid Puffy lightweight air dry clay: First thing I want to review is, the Padico Mermaid Puffy lightweight air dry clay. 

This clay has 3 different colors ----> White, biscuit and chocolate

I got this on Etsy (https://www.etsy.com/shop/ELVEINTIDOS?ref=l2-shopheader-name) and I picked the chocolate color. However, this seller is not selling any more craft supplies. If you'd like to get it you can always contact the seller and see if she can help you out :) She's from Japan and I found her listing prices are comparatively bargain (With both her listing price and shipping cost) I got mine for USD$3.48 a pack, shipping cost was USD$3.30. I think it's a pretty good price and she shipped fast too~ I was really happy with my purchased.

This lightweight air dry clay is from the same company (Padico)of Hearty air dry clay that I reviewed before (http://pinkpandacraftshop.blogspot.com/2013/04/japanese-resin-air-dry-clay-review.html)

It is 50g a pack. Package says this clay is waterproof, elastic, lightweight with velvety texture. It is made in Japan.

My thoughts:

The texture of this Mermaid Puffy clay is very similar to Hearty. The only thing is it's a little bit stickier. Very elastic, with a little bit of smell too. It's nothing bothering though. I guess it's from the color that added in it because it smells kind of like acrylic paint.

When I first opened it, it gave me an impression of chocolate mousse. It's a little wet. Hearty is more like marshmallow. It's very soft and easy to knead. The stickiness would gradually decrease the longer you knead it. So if you want to use it with molds you might want to knead it for a while first and let the stickiness fade out a little. It'd be easier to take the clay out of the mold this way.

This Mermaid Puffy lightweight air dry clay is great for making ice cream scoops too, I personally think. It's easy to stretch the ice cream texture out and sculpt the edge with it. On the other hand, polymer clay needs more effort to create such effect. Another great thing to make ice cream scoops with this lightweight clay is, it's not as heavy as some other clays for making jewelry pieces (Like rings, earrings or necklace charms etc.) It feels better to wear it on comparing to polymer clay or resin air dry clay.

Let's see how Mermaid Puffy does with molds:

This works great with smaller molds. In the picture above I didn't grease any of the molds. I kneaded the clay for awhile to take away the stickiness, so it came out pretty easy. The details showed up really nicely too and I'm really happy about it. Just make sure not to over knead it though, if not there'll be little dry cracks appear on the clay surface.

Then when it came to larger shape molds, I had a hard time to take the clay out. I tried to knead it but it didn't help. It's because the kneading only takes away the stickiness from the surface. So when the clay got pressed down into the mold, the sticky clay from the inside would touch the mold surface instead. And this is a larger shape too, it had a bigger surface to contact with the sticky clay. That's why the clay was stuck inside the mold. When I tried to pull it out, it would just mess up the shape of it....

Using Mermaid Puffy clay with bigger molds would be better to grease the molds first, such as using olive oil or baby oil. Flour or baby powder would help too but it'll also leave the powder on it. It's a little difficult to get it off comparing to oil.

One pack of Mermaid Puffy clay can make about this much of miniatures~

50g a bag is kind of small. So I guess it's good that it works better with smaller molds~ We can get more creations out of it :)

To conclude, I like this lightweight Mermaid Puffy clay. The texture is great, light and fluffy. I was making all these this afternoon and the tiny ones are already dried. The bigger ones will probably take a couple days to be completely dried. When it's dried, the color gets deeper and more vibrant. As far as I can see the drying ones I have here, they haven't shrunk too much. About 10% of the original size.

Also I find that when the clay is dried, it feels a little more "puffier" than Hearty clay. When i squeeze it, it feels like soft foam. So I guess why they have it names Mermaid Puffy~

The price of it would probably be the thing stop my from buying it again. Even though I found a bargain price from a great seller, it still considers as a little on the pricy side comparing to the Hearty air dry clay (The white color). They perform pretty much the same. So if I need a chocolate color I'd get the Hearty white lightweight clay (200g pack) and mix the color my own. Because I can get more products out of it. But if you want a really vibrant color, it'd be better to get the colored ones. It's because if you mix too much acrylic paint into the white clay, it'll make it too wet and sticky. So it depends on what you need for your creations~

Floree molds:

Next I want to talk about the Floree molds I have~ http://www.floree.jp/

I wanted to try this Floree brand a long time ago, pretty much since I started to make clay crafts. I was so into researching all things about clay miniatures (I still am~) I like it because they have molds that provide different sizes on 1 same shape. (As you can see below)

You can find different Floree molds on Etsy. Other than molds for clay, they have molds for resin too~ The ones for resin is made out of silicone. It's flexible and bendable. I haven't tried that yet, but I'll be happy to :)

My thoughts:

Here I have one in cookie shapes and one in Madeleine shapes. They have different sizes in 1 mold so it's very flexible to adjust the sizes you need.

I got this for about USD$13-14 a piece. It costs a little bit more comparing to the other clay molds in the market. It's in really good quality though. These black ones are in hard plastic, it's very durable.

Picture below you can see the actual sizes of the molds. They are small, like eraser size. (It's a toothpick under them lol)

Each of the mold has there own product number. The Madeleine one is G-077, and they have their company website embossed on it too~

Below you can see the results of using it with the Mermaid Puffy lightweight air dry clay. Shapes and lines came out very clearly. It's quite easy to take the clay out too even without greasing it.

The largest size of the Madeleine is kind of thick, but I could still take the clay out effortlessly.

The other one is a cookie shapes mold. The product number of it is G-029. This one has a lot of different sizes on it! 11 in total! It's also a black hard plastic mold for clay.

Below you can see all the results of the different sizes of the cookies. Some of them have different scallop edges~ I didn't grease this one as well. All the cookies came right out very easily.
This mold is also nicely made. All the details showed up very good. You can clearly see the scallop edges and the dots on them. (Even with the tiniest one!)

Hope this angle can give you a closer view to see them~

I really love these molds. Although it's on the pricier side, you get what you pay for. All the details are well made and it's very durable. I also like the small size of it too, saving some room for storage. (If you're into crafts, you know what I mean~) Floree gives a wide range of variety of different molds, you can probably find what you're looking for!

I'm really happy with the Floree molds and I would definitely recommend all clay lovers to try it out!

Over all I loved what I've got in this post~ They're all quite easy to get on the internet. Do some research and comparing all the costs, you might be able to find some better deals than I have here~ lol

Hope you all like the reviews I have this time! I'll come back for more until I have new goodies coming~

Have a great day everyone!

Ki

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Japanese resin air dry clay review (Cosmos, Grace, Modena Color & Hearty)

I'm glad that I finally get to try the Japanese air dry clay~!

I've been browsing a lot of Japanese fake clay food blog and I'm amazed how these bloggers can create! Some of them look just like real food! That makes me wonder, if I can create something like that too?

I have lots of fun with polymer clay. However, since you have to bake the polymer clay, there's some ingredients I can't mix it in and bake with. Therefore air dry clay is good to try with different results~

I bought some resin air dry clay on Etsy. This seller has all the clay I wanted to try and the price is reasonable.

Here's the seller I bought it from Hong Kong:

melovewholesale

https://www.etsy.com/shop/melovewholesale?ref=seller_info

Other than clay supply, they also have molds and other craft supplies~ I'll probably go back to this seller when I need to get some more~ (Unless I find somewhere has it cheaper lol)

Here I got 3 packs of Cosmos, 1 pack of Grace and 1 pack of Modena in yellow ocher.

Cosmos resin air dry clay

Packaging:

First of all, I'd like to talk about the Cosmos resin air dry clay.

This is 250g a pack. It comes with 2 tubes of clay. It's great the packaging is this way because you don't have to worry about the clay get dried out if you can't finish it all in one time. I'll talk about how to store the left over clay in a bit so you can keep the clay moist and we can work with it again for later~

Cosmos has this cute pink plastic packaging bag. You can see in this picture below, it comes with 2 tubes of white clay.

Texture & Coloring:
The texture of Cosmos is smooth and elastic. It's kinda sticky when it's fresh. It's a little bit hard at first, but it's not as hard as polymer clay. After kneading it awhile and warming it up, it'll start getting softer.
Mixing color with air dry clay is easy. You can use acrylic paint or oil paint to mix the color you want. Since the clay is originally in white, so the colors that come out are usually in pastel tone. If you'd like to get brighter, bolder colors, you'll need to keep adding acrylic paint little by little until you have the color you want.
Keep in mind that when the clay is completely dried, the color will get more vibrant. Also the size of clay will slightly shrink about 10-15% since the moisture in the clay will be evaporated.
Air dry clay also comes in primary colors too (Such as the picture below), like red, blue, yellow and green. They also have brown and black. Therefore if you want to save time mixing colors, you can purchase the air dry clay with primary colors.

I find the surface of this Cosmos resin air dry clay gets to dry pretty quick. Therefore, if you need to make texture on the surface, you need to make it fast (Such as cookie texture or strawberry seeds) I'd recommend to just get the amount you need when you work with this clay.

Also, this Cosmos air dry clay is quite elastic. It feels like dough. When you make textures on the clay, you will need to engrave on it heavy and deep. It's because if you make it too light, the clay will bounce back up and the textures will not be as cleared. So make sure you texture it well before it gets dried~

If the surface gets a little dry, you can start kneading it and it'll get softer again (Because the core is still moist) However, the longer you keep it out in the air, the less of the stickiness it will have as it keeps getting drier.

Molding:

Cosmos is pretty good for molding I would say. Since it's kind of sticky, so you have to put baby oil or olive oil in the mold to help release the clay. You can use a cotton swab to dip some oil and swipe it evenly into the mold. Only a tiny bit would work~ Too much oil would make the clay so greasy.

This clay pick up all details from the mold. It'd be great to use for molds with a lot of fine details in it.

Finish:

After the Cosmos clay is dried, it has a slightly translucent finish. It usually takes 2-3 days to dry completely. If you want a bold white color, you may want to put some white acrylic paint mix in it to have a whiter finish. In the picture below, the white cream part in the cake roll I've already put some white paint in it to make the color a little bit brighter.

With this clay, you can do a lot of different pastry items. Such as puff, cookies, donuts, cake rolls, macaroons.... Also, it's really great for making candies. It has a nice smooth finish that makes candies look so yummy!

When it's dried, it's very hard and durable.

Paint on:

I've tried 2 different ways to paint on this Cosmos clay. I tried using brush and sponge. Both of these methods worked great! Since this clay is not waterproof, it makes the paint so easy to absorb into the clay.

Using brush with acrylic paint:

To achieve gradient effect with paint brush, I like to thin acrylic paint with water, so I can build the color up layer by layer.

Using sponge with acrylic paint:

It's just the same as I paint on polymer clay using sponge. Dap a small amount of acrylic paint and build it up layer by layer. 

Pricing:

I got this Cosmos air dry clay around USD$13/pack. (Excluded shipping cost) I searched on the internet from other places, it's around USD$10 - USD$20/pack. Also you will need to compare the shipping costs from different online stores. As long as you do your research, I'm sure you would be able to get a reasonable price~

Grace resin air dry clay

Packaging:

Here's Grace resin air dry clay. It has a mint green packaging with a big green color "Grace" on top. It's very similar to Cosmos air dry clay since they're from the same company. It comes with 2 tubes of clay as well. They weight slightly lighter though. It's 200g/pack, 100g/tube.

Texture/Coloring:

This Grace resin air dry clay is so so smooth and it's even more elastic than Cosmos.

It's quite sticky when it's fresh. It's also very soft too, like a dough. It stretches even better than Cosmos.

You can use acrylic paint or colored air dry clay to mix with Grace. Just like the same as Cosmos.

If you put texture on your creations, you need to engrave it deep enough just in case it won't bounce back up~

Grace is really great for making fruits / fruit canes. When it's dried, it's still a little tender. Therefore it's pretty easy to cut into fruit slices when they're dried~

Finish:

This Grace has a very nice translucent finish when it's dried. (More translucent than Cosmos) It's also very smooth and elastic. It usually takes 2-3 days to dry completely. Also, after it's dried, it'll shrink about 10%.

Paint on:

Grace is easy to paint on too. Using either brush or sponge. Same opinion as Cosmos clay~

See~ It's really easy to cut and slice :)

Pricing:

I bought the Grace resin air dry clay on Etsy, from a seller in Hong Kong. According to my research, the price range is usually around USD$11 - USD$19 (Excluded shipping cost). Some seller on Etsy would provide wholesale option so it would make the price a slightly cheaper. Do your research and get the best price :)

Modena Color air dry clay (Yellow ocher)

Packaging:

I picked a yellow ocher color Modena air dry clay. It's tight wrapped with a yellow ocher plastic bag. It is 60g/pack. This Modena color collection has a wide range of color selection. It has black, brown, red, yellow, blue, green and white.

Texture/Coloring:

The texture of this Modena clay is very smooth. To me the surface feels like eraser/rubber. It'll get softer after kneading. It's not as sticky as Cosmos or Grace. If you are making your creations need to be assembled together, make sure you use glue to help secure them. It's not as sticky so it's not as easy to stick them together. Also the surface of this clay can get to dry fast, so I'd recommend only taking the amount you need when you work with this. Then storage the rest of it in a zip lock bag.

Since this Modena collection of clay has a wide selection of colors, it's easy to mix the color you want. And of course, you can also use acrylic paint to help~

Molding:

As I've mentioned above, this Modena air dry clay is not that sticky. It makes it great for molding. With mold shallow like the picture below, I don't even have to put any oil in it to help releasing the clay. It comes out effortlessly. If you have a mold that has some depth, it's still better to use some oil to help pick it out.

This clay picks up great details from molds. You can see shapes and lines come out very nicely & clearly.

Engraving this Modena clay is easy. It doesn't "bounce back" like Cosmos or Grace, yet it's still quite elastic. You can see the picture below, the almonds I made have the lines on it clearly~

Finish:

Modena is very smooth. When it's dried, it's slightly flexible. If your creation has some thickness, the flexibility will decrease. It is a little translucent when it's dried.

After it's dried, it will shrink about 10%. It takes about 2-3 days to be completely dried. The yellow ocher color I have pretty much stay the same before and after. So you don't have to worry about the color might change.

Paint on:

I haven't tried to paint on this clay yet. I believe it wouldn't have a big difference between the other 2 clays we've talked about. This clay claims it's waterproof. I'll try to paint on this in the coming future and update it on this blog post.

Pricing:

Pricing of Modena is in between USD$3 - USD$7/pack (Excluded shipping cost). You can find this on Etsy or you can order from Padico online shop.

Hearty super lightweight air dry clay

Packaging:

I got mine at Hobby Lobby. This is 149g/pack. It's different from the Japanese version packaging. The Japanese version comes in 2 different sizes, 50g/pack and 200/pack.

The graphics on the package is very similar. They have the same flowers design  with a white background. The one I got from Hobby Lobby has a plastic/foil bag. The Japanese version has a plastic bag as packaging.

Texture/Coloring:

Hearty clay is really really light and fluffy! The texture is very interesting. It has a foamy sense of touch, like marshmallow~ 

This clay is very soft and moist when you open it but it's not too sticky~ Hearty is not as smooth as the other clays above though.

It's quite elastic and stretchy. This texture is really great for making ice cream and macaroons, or cookies~ Especially when you make the edges for ice cream and macaroon, it's really easy to sculp it with just a toothpick. Unlike polymer clay, it takes more steps to achieve such effects.

Coloring Hearty clay is easy. I like to use acrylic paint to do this. It also comes with different colors of Hearty clay (Colors ones only come in 50g)

Hearty clay already has some texture on it (Picture below). If you make some pastry items or ice cream, you don't necessary need to make extra texture on it~ (It makes the process easier~)

This Hearty clay is a little different from the other 3 clays we've talked about (It's not as smooth). As you can see the picture below, it has some little fibers in it~ It feels like paper texture.

Molding:

Hearty clay is very great for molding~!

Since it's not that sticky, it comes off the mold really easily. It also keeps great details from the mold. I like this clay a lot!

Finish:

Hearty clay is very light and fluffy. It's not translucent though. It takes 1-2 days to dry. When it's dried, it has a little bit of paper finish feeling. There's some tiny fibers in it. Also it'll shrink 5%-10% after it's dried.

It's very flexible and light. It's not as hard like Cosmos and Grace. It feels like foam.

This picture below you can see the the difference between translucent and not translucent~

It's really easy to cut even when it's dried. It's great when you make items like layered cake or pie, you can cut it into slices after dry.

Paint on:

With this clay I find it's easier to paint it with brush and acrylic paint. This is not waterproof so it absorb the paint really well. Make sure you start with very thin acrylic paint. Then layer it on to get the gradient effect.

Pricing:

The one that I got from Hobby Lobby was USD$9.99, and of course I used my 40% off coupon :) So it makes it USD$6/pack (149g).

The Japanese versions I found online are usually around USD$5 - USD$15 (200g) and USD$3 - USD$8 (50g). Shipping cost is excluded from these prices, so do some research before buying it online~ You can find this on the Padico online shop too.

This Hearty clay has more amount of clay comparing to the other clays above. Since it is super lightweight, you get more products in a same weight (Thumbs up!)

Storage:

Storing these resin-based air dry clay is easy. You will need:

-Zip lock bag

-Plastic wrap

-Paper towel

When you have left over clay, it's better to storage it well to prevent exposing it in the air for too long.

You can wrap the clay with plastic wrap. Make sure you get all the air out and twist it tight. Then store it in a zip lock bag.

It's better to store it with some wet paper towel as well, so it can keep the moisture in the air dry clay. The wet paper towel can help to keep the clay moist for a little longer than without it.

Overall:

Overall, I really like every single one of the resin-based air dry clay I've tried. They all work really great and I like the fact that you can mix and match them to have different texture~ (Such as mixing Grace with Cosmos or mixing Hearty with Cosmos etc.)

I like the smoothness of these air dry clays have. Sometimes polymer clay doesn't have that even and smooth texture.

I like the way Hearty and Grace that you can still sculp it after they're dried. You can mix different ingredients in it to get different effects (Such as silicone or painted items). Since polymer clay needs to go into the oven, there's a limit of elements you can put it in and bake with. Air dry clay can be used in this aspect~

Storing the air dry clay is easy. However, you will need to finish using it in a certain period of time. Polymer clay doesn't have this problem. Once you open your air dry clay, you still want to finish using them a.s.a.p.

Another down side is, pricing.

Actually the product itself isn't too pricy. The only problem is shipping cost. Most of these air dry clays are not available in the craft stores in US. It's better to find an online store that carries most of the products you'd like to purchase. This can save you a little bit of shipping cost~ Most importantly, like I keep saying, do some more research before you buy :) Save a little bit of money can always help~

There are some more air dry clay I'd like to try out (Of course~) I'll keep updating this post whenever I try something new~ Please stay tuned for that. Hope you all like this review and I'll be back soon. (Maybe a tutorial with air dry clay~?)

Ki

PinkPandaCraftShop

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http://pinkpandacraftshop.blogspot.com/2014/05/pink-panda-review-floree-clay-molds.html

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