You mentioned that you have dried the projects in your oven?  Can you expound on that?  I am trying to make a turtle shell for my son's Halloween costume and really need to get it done.  IT is too large for the crockpot - so tell me about how to do it in the oven?  Temperature - time???

A crockpot is a large clay pot that fits into a metal base, and the base plugs into an electrical outlet in the wall.  It is intended for cooking casseroles and stews over several hours. The lids are often clear plastic or glass.

I am assuming that Butterbee has her pot on LOW.

Here is one for an example:  http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl= … %26hl%3Den

Sue

Sorry I haven't been around for a while to answer your questions guys! I stopped doing papier-mache for a short while, but now I am back at it. Thank goodness for CatPerson! i am so happy that Sue is around.

To answer your questions about the crockpot, I found that it dried pieces really well - but of course it limited you to small pieces. I thought about the problem and then though that what I needed was something like a cheap homemade food dehydrator to dry my pieces quickly and then found these fantastic instructions on the internet to build one.

http://www.alpharubicon.com/prepinfo/de … tryder.htm

This is cheap, quick and easy for those people who want to have something that dries their pieces without needed to monopolize their ovens, or be limited to the amount of space of a crockpot.

I hope this idea is help to everyone. <3

Let us know how it goes please Shali.

Shali, one of the most difficult things about English is the idioms, or figures of speech which, to someone who is not familiar with them, make absolutely no sense at all. Even Americans and the British who speak the same language, often don't understand common slang or local phrases.

"Let us know how it goes" means to let us know what happens when you work on your projects. You can say the paper kept tearing, or the glue was too thick and next time you will make it thinner, or you didn't add enough layers, or it was too lumpy, or other things like that.

We are all learning more about papier mache, and sometimes someone will post an experience that solves a problem most of us have had.

Sometimes we come up with NEW problems!

You are doing fine, Shali, and your English is very good, far better than my "Dictionary Portuguese"!

Sue

Sue, I know what you mean. Really I don't care because it almost impossible to know a language as the native does. The same happens with portuguese from Brazil and Portugal and even here in Brazil that is a very big country sometimes people from south and north don't understand each other because of the local expressions.

I like to learn new things and a good way for me to improve a language is to write, read and repeat any words and expressions. I like that and I like to change knowledge but that day, was very funny to me!!!!

So, thank you once more Sue and your "portuguese" was very good. I could understand everything!!!

Shali

Hi,
for those of you wondering like me what is a crockpot , I found this description so now I know.
" An enclosed vessel that is used to cook food at low temperatures using the 'slow cooker' technique. The chief advantage being that, once all the ingredients are assembled in the pot, it can be turned on (this appliance runs on electricity) and left to complete the cooking process over several hours without supervision."
It seems it is also called slow cooker.Though I think there isn't such appliance here on the market.Basically it seems to me the same as putting a clay pot in your oven but it is more convenient with this crockpot.
Anyway I am now trying to build  the dehydrator, described  in one of the other posts.I will tell you  how it works later.

To those of you who have used a crock pot to dry pieces:  Did you have any problems with warping or twisting of the piece?  I was wondering if that would be an issue with fast drying.

Sue

CatPerson: I never had a problem with twisting or warping. The one thing that I liked was that you could put on heavy layers of papier-mache and it still dried well.

I do have to confess I try it too many times, before I decided to build myself a full size dryer so I am by no means an expert at using it - but it is what I experienced the few times I did use it before I moved on the bigger and better things.