Making minis is hard - Pardo clay xp

Wanted to try and make some minis so ordered some Pardo clay....  Its made out of beeswax

Heres the jar, there were a lot more balls in it then expected...

Clay is fairly solid when you pull a ball out, you knead it a bit and  it softens up.  Once softened up though, its quite soft and hard to make stay in the shape you want.  Good for making golems, not so good for anything super detailed... now I'm sure someone with a lost of artistic skill could make something better, but the stuff turned out ok....  

So my daughter and I each got some clay and started making stuff, I had a list of tiny minis I wanted to make, so I started seeing what I could do... It was so soft I had a hard time making it stay in shape.   It was hard to work while holding, so we put it on bases to work on.... since its tiny's we used "gems" and heroscape tokens.  My daughter didn't have anything specific she was trying to make, so she made a doughnut and then tried to make better minis then I did.  I made a snowman, so she made a snowman.  I made a jelly, she made a jelly...etc  She eventually had to goto bed, and I made a few more

Penguin snowman, rock, doughnut on a plate, jellys, and golem, all uncooked

So, the big thing we discovered after leaving the minis out over night to harden to be easier to take off the bases and put on the foil to cook was... pardo reacts with plastic and stay soft over night, all the minis had a gummy mess on the bottoms and were stuck to the bases and once pulled off, there was still gummy mess stuck to the bases and a mark in the shape of the mini in the base.  I tried to clean off the gummy messes on a few of the bases, but it didn't come off with soap and water and some scrubbing, so I ended up throwing them out(what a waste).  Although once cooked, the clay is nice and solid but just enough bend, so I am not worried about it breaking.  any parts of the clay touching the foil almost had a polished look after cooking too.

The bunch post cooking at 266 degrees... small ones for 30 min, and the large ones for 45,  maybe could have done them a bit longer for the large ones, but after cooling I really couldn't make much of a mark with my thumbnail, so ok.  

ok, now time to figure out how to base them, as I threw out what I had been planning as using for bases.  I found some mage knight dungeons tokens that were just the right size and made out of fairly stiff card board, that was almost plastic-ee, so I tried that since these won't be seeing "rough play" hoepfully

the minis with their new bases, the rock and the larger snowman ended up on  medium bases, not shown here.  Also I should note:
I used Loctite Super glue control gel to stic them on, like I have been using for all the minis I have been gluing.  Its amazing because it has lasted so long... I am used to using superglue and getting 1 use out of it because the glue hardens in the tube, but this tube has lasted close to a year(and that was even keeping it in the garage where it got hot during the summer, and cold during the winter

with flash

I think of all the minis, the voodoo doll/small ghost on the left turned out best, and closest to what I pictured in my head . Mud golem is ok, gold golem is ok, and penguin snowman is just kinda goofy.  As far as painting - india ink stuck to the pardo not so good, but acrylic paint stuck great, so the minis were pretty easy to paint.  

I didn't make the mini in the middle, its heroclix Klarion, but he needed MOAR catz, so I made 2 catz to put on his base.  After I made them while the minis were still unpainted, I asked my wife what she thought they were - she guessed they were caterpillars.... after they were based and painted(and nest to a guy with a cat on his shoulders) I asked here again to guess what they were.... she still guessed caterpillars..    I gotz mad l33t sculpting skillz.  ;-)

Big head baby - I guess the head scale wasn't quite right, but he could be the son of the big head dwarf... or a baby Charlie Brown... Maybe thats why I picked the color scheme for teh swadling.  The other one is a rock/easter island head... I was going to make it grey, but I had a cooling mix of paint on my tray and just kinda splattered it on all mixed up.. I guess I should have turned it... the other side is its good side.

My daughter also helped out with the painting - she did our jellys and the doughnut on plate and the red rock and a snowman.  I think her stuff turned out pretty good.... I'll have to find something for the doughnut to proxy for, although I guess it could just be a really large doughnut for the minis.  ;-)


Up next I ordered some greenstuff, so when that comes we'll make some more, and I'll use up the rest of the pardo, but most likely will not be ordering anymore of the pardo if I like the greenstuff.....  but when I saw pardo was German and made out of beeswax, I had to try it.  ;-)  I will rate it the David Hasselhoff of sculpting clay.  ;-)