What is heavier, air dry clay or polymer clay?

Question

Hello! I wanted to make a start at cosplay and create some horns to wear on a headband. I wanted to make ram horns, and they'd be really heavy with the air dry clay I have. I don't mind them being heavy, except they may fall off of the headband. I've never worked with polymer clay, so I'd rather work with air dry clay, but if it's much lighter then I would love to use it. I'm not sure where to get polymer clay as well, so you may answer that too!

Answer 1

Polymer clay will be much lighter - especially since you ought to make something the size of horns hollow around a heavy duty aluminum foil core so it is has uniform thickness walls for proper baking (actually air dry should be hollow also, harder to dry) and to save money.

Buy the larger block of Sculpey, etc., to save money although you might want to buy smaller blocks for a lower initial investment. And with polymer clay you can glue a much more reliable mount inside to attach.

Answer 2

That depends on the type of air-dry clay you use and/or the type of polymer clay you use.

(And of course, if you use either type of clay with a permanent armature inside like a wad of aluminum foil, "Styrofoam" shape, etc, or if you make it hollow, the item will always be lighter weight than if you'd made it solid.)



The lighter-weight air-dry clays tend to be those mostly made from paper including purchased Celluclay or could be Model Magic, and homemade paper clay pulp.



The lighter-weight polymer clays are lines like Ultralight and Pluffy. (Btw, if you do buy a regular-weight polymer clay, I wouldn't suggest bulk Sculpey or SuperSculpey, or Sculpey III, because they're more brittle when after baking in areas where they're *thin* than other brands and lines of polymer clay.)



You can buy polymer clay and air-dry clays you don't make at home yourself primarily in craft stores, art supply stores, and online.



You might want to read some of the info I've written before about making "horns to wear" from various materials:

https://answersrip.com/question/index?qid=20121005011954AAE13Z3



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