Make Beautiful Sculptures and Masks with Paper Mache and Paper Mache Clay
Create beautiful gifts and home decor that will be treasured for years, or make a memorable mask for your next party or your school’s production of the Lion King Play.
Latest Paper Mache Tutorials:
Is This the Craziest Thing I’ve Ever Made?
This cicada bug mask has to be the craziest thing I’ve ever made with paper mache. But what is the cutest thing? Or the project I wish I’d made, but never have?
Make a Little Owl with Paper Mache Clay
This little owl starts out with a simple cardboard pattern and a fast sketch. Then it’s finished with paper mache clay and acrylic paint.
Sculpt Faces with this Easy DIY Sculpting Form
I made this pattern for a skull-shaped form to make sculpting a head a lot easier (and it’s less expensive than the resin skull I’ve often used in the past).
Jonni’s Sculpting Books
Paper mache recipes.
You can find all the traditional paper mache paste recipes on this site, plus my famous paper mache clay recipe (and several new variations). You can always find the recipe you’re looking for under the Recipes link at the tip of the site.
Or download my free booklet, The 5 Best Recipes for Paper Mache.
I’m Jonni …
… the creator of this site and the author of several best-selling sculpting books on amazon.com. You’ll find me on the Daily Sculptors page almost every day, along with many other friendly and supportive folks who love creating beautiful things with this exciting medium. Be sure to drop by and say “hi.” We’d love to meet you.
Masks and Sculptures Made by Our Readers:
ET phone home
Made by Nani Marston Special birthday surprise. 1st attempt at a project. Grand daughter wanted ET for her 9th. She is a compassionate beautiful creature
I love what you do! I watch every time your on. I look for your book’s. Thank you for your wisdom!
I’m glad you’re enjoying the videos and projects! 🙂
Hello,
I was watching how to make the patolone mashe mask. You skipped how to wrap the nose. Is there a technique to do it, or I just wrap it?
Yes, you just need to wrap it with your paper mache. Noses usually need smaller pieces, especially around the nostrils, to get them to lie down flat. Are you making a Pantalone mask? If you are, we’d all love to see how it comes out.
Hi, i love you’re work !!!
I would like to make a carousel type horse …this would be my first paper mache project, do you have any patterns? That you can suggest or give me any ideas?
I would really appreciate it, thank you
Hi Rossi. I have a pattern and instructions for a horse in my book Make Animal Sculptures with Paper Mache Clay, but it’s one of the very last projects. The book is set up with the easy project in the beginning, and then it works up to more challenging projects. Horses are challenging!
I also have a video that shows you how to make a pattern using a photo or drawing. You can find it here. Have fun!
Am really excited with this website and i hope it Will be helpful to me because am to start a business goes exactly with what i see here (statues) even if i have to zero skill ! But am courageous noting that i start from zero to hero !
Hi, I love your works. I’d like to make a dragon paper mache sculpture but I don’t know where to begin with. What kind of paper mache is it best to use? What kind of support should I make?
There are so many ways to sculpt with paper mache, and none of them are “best.” My favorite way to make a four-legged creature is to start with a pattern on the inside that sets the outline shapes, fill in the forms with crumpled paper or foil, and then cover the armature with either paper strips and paste or my paper mache clay recipe. Although it isn’t a dragon, all of the basic techniques were used to make the little blue hippo. You can find the first video in the series here.
Have fun! And if you get stuck along the way, just leave a comment on the Daily Sculptors page, and I or one of my readers will be happy to help.
what can I do to reattach a broken piece of paper mache on a statue to the statue itself? The piece that broke off is a wing of an angel and the edges are very rough where it separated. I have read that a hot glue gun would work and would penetrate the small pocked areas of the two pieces. Do you think this would work?
Hi Kim. I don’t know if that will work or not. I would probably use a two-part epoxy glue instead, but I haven’t tested the two products to see which one would work best. I have been told that you use the epoxy glue you want the slower-setting version because it’s stronger than the fast stuff. Did the wing break off at the joint where it attaches to the back? If so, you’ll need to support it carefully while the glue hardens or dries in order to get a good bond. And that spot has a lot of stress, because the weight of the wing will be trying to pull the wing tips downward.
Someone else might have more experience with this than I do. You might want to put your question out on the Daily Sculptors page, too, because a lot of regular visitors check the comments there every day. Good luck with it! 🙂
Hey, Jonni I just recently started to get into paper mache from watching your videos. They have helped me a lot. I had just recently made a dragon egg out of paper mache and your recipe for paper mache clay. Although the base for the egg was paper mache/ paper mache clay i had used AIR DRY clay to make scales on the egg. I left it to dry overnight only to see that the clay had cracked in multiple places. I was wondering if you could help me figure out what I did wrong. I’m new to clay. Thank you
Hi Perla. Were you using my air dry clay recipe, or a commercial brand? My recipe has a few quirks, and needs to be applied in a certain way to prevent the individual pieces from pulling apart as they dry. This happens because it dries quickly after being applied to an armature, and the surface is no longer sticky. If a new piece of clay is put next to one that was on the armature for a few minutes, the new one needs to be melded into the old one or they will pull apart when dry. Does this sound like what happened on your dragon egg?
I was using store brought clay , I was going to use your recipe but I had already had the clay because it was gifted to me. Yes it does sound like what happened.
Although I did try to smooth the pieces together as best I can. Does this have anything to do with the climate or moister in the clay? I also tried to use water to smooth it out
It might just be caused because the surface underneath doesn’t shrink when the air dry clay is drying. Any water-based clay shrinks when it dries, and if it’s put over a solid object it has to crack. Is that a possible cause? And can you just fill in the cracks with more of your clay?
Oh ok thank you! Now i know more for future projects. I would also like to try your recipe as well and compare the two. I love your channel and am thinking about purchasing one of your books. Is there one you recommend getting first ? I’m not completely a beginner but I also have not been doing this for years, thank you
Hi Perla. Most people start with the Make Animal Sculptures with Paper Mache Clay. It’s written as a course in sculpting, starting with easy projects and working up to more complicated projects. Have fun with it!
hi,
i lhave see your work online and like ask you if you can help me…
i like create an mammuth head for a costume at live size of this animal, so ask myself if you can study an paper pattern for this animal and contact me to say the cost.
thank’s for attention,
mauro
Hi Mauro. I don’t create sculpture patterns on commission – each one takes at least a month, and I can’t imagine anyone wanting to pay me a whole month’s salary. But you can use the baby elephant wall sculpture pattern as a base for you mammoth head. Just print it larger (you might need to have a print shop to do it for you) and then add tusks and bumps or whatever you need to change it from a young African elephant to an adult mammoth. You can change the shapes by adding crumpled foil with hot glue, or crumpled paper with masking tape, before putting on the layer of paper mache.
Have fun with it!
Hi Joan;
I’m starting to make a paper mache’ marionette cast for Don Quixote. How much detail would you like to see?
John, I’m not sure we understand your question. It sounds like an exciting project, though.
I would love to! Let’s see how they turn out! ?
Hi, Jonni! I am enjoying your videos. I am using your clay recipe to create rock walls. If I do not have enough clay on the work, can I add more after it dries? Thank you!
Yes, I do that all the time. I hope you’ll come back and show off your walls on the Daily Sculptors Page when they’re done. We’d really like to see how they come out.
The rock walls are going to be in a green house, so it will be somewhat humid. I was planning to cover the clay in concrete and then covering with a sealant. The concrete does not seem to be working as I had hoped. Do you think if I just paint the clay and seal it, it will be safe with the humidity?
Hi Lila. That does change things – I assumed you were putting the walls inside a house. I’ve never tried putting the paper mache clay inside a greenhouse, but it would be a real challenge to keep it from growing mold. Maybe if the wall you’re applying it to is really well-sealed to keep the clay from soaking up water from the back, and you seal the front, too, it will work – but you’ll be experimenting. Have you already put the paper mache clay on the walls? If so, you might want to consider Flex Seal for the waterproof coat. Some people say it works well. If you haven’t already done the paper mache clay, you might want to consider doing it like this fellow does, with cement, instead: https://youtu.be/gUMeeo08xFo
Do you have a cat/ocelot/panther/tiger pattern? I am looking for something I can make an ocelot from.
Thank you,
Myra
Hy Myra. I have a series of videos showing you how to make your own cat pattern and complete a sculpture. I used my own cat as a model, but a wild cat could be made using the same techniques. In fact, I used the same method for the cat that I used for all the projects in my book on animal sculptures. You can find the first cat video in the series here.
Jonni, thank you so much! I have kept on exploring all your instructional materials – you have such a deep group of videos and other materials. Thank you for publishing all these resources. It’s inspiring to see such a long-term commitment of an artist to their work.
Best,
Myra
Thanks for the kind thoughts, Myra. I’m glad you’re enjoying the site. 🙂
Do you have a book of patterns for animal heads or do you sell them each separately? Your work is amazing, thank you!!
Hi Lisa. I sell them separately. I have other books, and my first book has patterns of four-legged animals. You start with the pattern and then add crumpled paper to create the rounded forms. But the 3-dimensional patterns are all sold individually.
Love from Mexico
Do you have a bunny pattern?
There’s the jackrabbit wall sculpture, and a folk art bunny and a lop-eared bunny and the tiny bunny. Gosh – until you asked and I did a search, I didn’t realize how many rabbits we have on this site. I hope you find one you’d like to make. 🙂