Good call, Catperson!

There's an acrylic that's clear too, in house painting quantity and cheap. Just add some ground chalk. This should work, though I haven't tried it.

There's a pretty good source for Gesso that's not TOO expensive, but still pretty expensive. Buy the large jar at Walmart! I think I bought a liter for $5.99 or something like that. It was far (and I mean far)  more expensive in a craft store!

I shake mine thoroughly. It's not really thin, but it's not thick either. Heck! I dunno what how thick it's suppose to be. It 'runs' the way I want it to, and usually I gotta thin it just a bit to make that happen.

For thick stuff, nothing beats paper clay!  I don't care how expensive it is. It's the only thing that works. Minimal sanding required (320 grit paper if you've got a deft touch). Then, after you seal that with PVA, then seal that with Gesso, it rocks!

This paper clay is really good. You can do everthing you can do with clay, then after it dries, do everything you can do with paper (wood). You can make coils, slabs, cones, any shape. Then you can carve it, cut it, press it, form it... just about anything clay does. After it dries, you can cut it, saw it, file it, sand it, and whatever. It has saved my life.

And another backtrack. I talked about Model Magic in another thread. I said it was rubbery and bouncy when it dried. I was wrong. Now it's dried for 4 days and it's very firm. It may be brittle, but I dunno. But the best thing is that it's smoooooooth! Smooth as a baby's bottom! (almost as smooth as mine  )  But, it's not sticky. You gotta work this stuff on it's own, then attach it with glue after it dries. You can make some great shapes with this stuff that can't be achieved with other stuff. It's somewhat expensive though. Buy it at Walmart in the kids craft section to alleviate the expense.

Gesso? I guess so! But I don't use it for building. I use it for sealing and priming.  Then again, I'm no expert!

I want something the consistency of heavy cream

Me too!  hmmmm... I wonder if there's a paper foam. THAT would rock my world! 

Newmodler, why do you thin the PVA with water? Just curious, cause I use PVA + wallpaper paste which are about the same thickness. Does the water help penetrate all layers? Or...??

huh?  You're using plaster of paris on your work? This coated with PVA+wallpaper paste makes a lumpy mess?

If that's the case I'M SURE GLAD YOU TOLD ME! I don't need unexpected problems.

I use PVA+Wallpaper paste as my glue. I didn't want rodents and bugs making lunch out of my stuff. This is more expensive (a lot more compared to just wheat flour), but I figgered it'd be worth it in the long run.

At one point I considered using plaster of paris for forming. I decided against it due to weight. Now I'm glad I did knowing the reaction!

WHEW! That was a close one!

Now where's your pictures? If you're using plaster on it, I wanna see. Tell where to look (give me the gallery page number and your FULL NAME if you can't provide a link).

Hi,
you'll find me under Charlotte Hills in the gallery.  The pva/water/plaster of paris gesso'd pieces are the chicken and all the dolls.

The snow queen etc are done with layers of good quality tissue paper and wire wool sanding and then a final layer of tissue applied and then burnished with a spoon back to get a smooth finish.

I get my tissue paper by the stack from our local wine merchant who buys in bulk and is always happy to let me have a stack for about £3 (approx $6 I think).

I reckon if I used Tortilla wraps my children would eat all the sculpture before I got very far.

Thanks for all the lovely comments.

I make the clothes for the dolls out of old shirts etc that I find in our local charity shops.  Their torso's are made from old t-shirts etc.  The idea is that as much as possible is recycled.

The Mermaid is my current pride and joy and is a birthday present for my husband's God-daughter.

I can't wait to see your finished pieces.  Re: the sewing, I do use a sewing machine but tend to sew by hand.  However they are fiddly so I do try and make everything as simple as possible and I think if you had problems with your osteo-arthritis then you may find that you could glue clothing together.  I try to make as many of the existing seams on the old clothes work for me as I can.

Lengo, maybe you missed the sign, but you are on the official Learn as You Go Program.  You'll learn more from your mistakes than your successes, frustrating as they might be.

[Covering my head for protection]
Why does everyone want to mix PVA with methyl cellulose??? I just don't get it. 

MC is an organic material that allows moisture to work its way naturally out of a PM piece made with it as the adhesive. Why add plastic to it?

If you make a chicken pot pie, do you embed a layer of plastic wrap (cling film) under the top crust?

Why not just use the MC? It is a good adhesive all by itself. It doesn't mold, and it doesn't attract vermin.

Sue

I agree totally with Sue (apologies David) over the addition of PVA to PM.  I know a lot of people prefer the bond they get but I personally get on better without it.  The only time I use PVA is in my own version of gesso.  This is because no matter how many times I have tried it the mix of wallpaper paste and plaster of paris gives me a gungy, rubbery, blobby mess that takes days to dry and wont sand properly.  Either I get the mix wrong, there is a chemical mismatch with the pofp hardener or I am just no good at mixing. :oops:

Maybe when finances pick up I will try bona fide gesso.  The other reason I struggle with gesso is that buying decent quantities of ground chalk or spackle have also been out of the question financially.  I am a believer in bulk buying when possible and find art shops prohibitively expensive.

To be honest I suspect that the fundamental difference between spackle and gesso is a cost issue.  The former was originally developed for artists painting surfaces, was only ever needed in small quantities and needed to produce a very smooth surface.  Over the years artists discovered that the mix of animal based glue and calcium carbonate gave the best results.

Spackle has its roots in the building trade, is used in much larger quantities and as far as I can ascertain the smoothness of the surface isn't quite so finicky.  I believe that there are variations in the hardness and sandibility of the final results but that is probably due to the fact that a renaissance artist would expect the preparation of the boards to have many layers scraped back and re painted with thin layers until the board has the required finish for tempera.

However I have very little experience of spackle and much more of gesso.

Hope that helps.

Lengo: When I was at the hardware store. I told the man that I did papier-mache and I asked him about joint compound because it was cheaper and he said that it was better to use spackle for papier-mache because the joint compound wasn't that strong.

Not that the man at the hardware store would know anything about papier-mache would know about working with papier-mache personally - but I thought I'd pass it on to you. 

MC (methyl cellulose) by itself does not attract vermin of any kind (I do not include destructives dogs in this statement).

There are really only two kinds of wallpaper paste that we would be interested in: wheat flour-based and methylcellulose-based, both in dry form.  Make sure you're getting the one you want.  The MC type tends to be more expensive than the flour-based kind, but I've heard too many horror stories about flour-based adhesive attracting rodents and insects.

I can see how you might get a mess from mixing MC with plaster! MC  dries, plaster cures, it's a chemical reaction.  And I would expect the same kind of result if you mixed PVA with plaster.

Spackle ingredients: Calcium carbonate (65-70%), Attapulgite (a clay) (1-5%), and Quartz (0.1-1.0%). What else is in it (the other 34-39%) isn't declared.

Gesso ingredients: An acrylic polymer medium, calcium carbonate, & titanium dioxide for whiteness.

Plaster of Paris is calcium sulfate that has been dried extensively. When water is added, it changes into a paste, and then into a solid, due to chemical reaction with the water.

So, you see that Spackle and gesso are related, whereas plaster is only a distant relation.

Due to the inclusion of the acrylic polymer in the gesso, it will be more flexible. Looking at the ingredients for Spackle, I see nothing there that will flex when dried. 

Sue

White glue is white glue is white glue. They're all pretty much the same, as far as I've seen.  I do believe there are perhaps three hard-to-find brands that are pH neutral (pH: 7) for the paper archivists.  Most PVA is somewhat acidic (4.3-5), if that is an issue for you.

My sister said she ran across some cheap white glue that was more watery than most, but that's probably the main difference.

Sue