Made by Kris Pratt
Some paper mache “wall art” sculptures.
The clay was made using Jonni’s recipe but with egg cartons instead of toilet paper.
The Celtic Heart is aluminium foil on cardboard, then covered in clay.
The tree is cardboard back, with wire glued on to make the loops come out, then bulked up with aluminium foil, and covered with the clay. I included some painting progress pictures. I made it to hold my flower hair clips, added a wire loop on the back to hang it on the wall.
I made the Lava “ZooYork” logo for my nephew. It is cardboard with clay over it. Painting took a while, base solid black, then just layers of yellow, orange, and red in the cracks (looked at many images of lava/magma texture photos online). Finished by dry-brushing different shades of grey to make it look like rock(same technique on the celtic heart).
The egg cartons made the clay have a very organic and thick texture, perfect for the rock and tree bark looks.
These are a few more of my projects, I still have… I think… 7 in the works….
Beautiful work. You’d never guess it was paper mâché. It is so well done.
Great works of art. I tried Celtic knots once and admire your ability to make a beautiful one. Great box. I love all these projects. Tree is awesome.
Thanks, the heart was kind of a test before a bigger project I want to create.
I appreciate you comments, I love all your projects too, those Hippos are amazing!
Kris, your wall art pieces are really lovely. Did you have any challenges when you added the paper mache clay to the cardboard? It doesn’t look like you had any warping at all, and that’s almost always a problem with flat cardboard. Do you have some tips for us? 🙂
The Celtic heart was made in two parts, first a heart shaped piece of cardboard that I used aluminum foil to make the knot, so that piece was covered in foil before the clay went on so the cardboard stayed dry. After that was done I glued on the cardboard side and covered that in clay, it did warp a little, but the solid front helped that. However the ‘ZooYork’ logo was just clay on cardboard. I cut out two copies of the shape of the logo from cardboard, then glued on the 2″ tall sides all around the back logo piece to make a hollow “box”. What kept it from warping was probably that I glued extra pieces of carboard on the inside across most of the points, crisscrossing them throughout before gluing on the front piece of carboard. This added great stability without adding too much weight….
I hope I explained that well enough…..
Thanks, Kris – excellent explanation! And your methods obviously worked. 🙂