Many of you faithful readers know that I love polymer clay and am excited to try out all of the different brands on the market. So when Amaco offered to send me samples of “Cloud Clay,” I thought, “FUN!” and told them to bring it on.

First, a bit about Cloud Clay is not polymer clay, but rather an air-dry variety. It’s also VERY light and has a foamy feel…but we’ll get to all that in a minute. Here’s how Amaco describes Cloud Clay:

Cloud Clay™ is as light as air … AP certified non-toxic and safe to use! This soft, puffy, and pliable modeling material is fun to squeeze, shape or mold. Cloud Clay has more ‘stretch’ than other brands, so fibers won’t break when pulled apart, projects are more durable, even for the smallest details.  Sticks to itself and not to hands. Colors blend well and mix with acrylics! Shrinks very little, so it can be used over armature including balloons!

This product is primarily marketed for children and/or classroom use, so I thought, “OK! Let’s let my kids be responsible for testing it!” I’ve got a 9 year old son and a five year old daughter, and it didn’t take any convincing at all that they should play with this clay and tell me how they liked it.

So I got the kiddos all set up and off they went. Now, I asked my son to tear the clay, because it says it’s stretchy. See for yourself:

Oh! The expresssion of effort!

He even said that it was difficult to tear off into chunks. (We just got scissors, then, and cut off the amounts we needed)

That being said, let me re-iterate that Cloud Clay is an air-dry clay (!!!) and you should only cut off what you need and store the rest in air-tight baggies. Our house must be super-dry, because we found that in the space of an hour, the clay was starting to “set up” on top and there was a bit of a skin on it. (Kind of like when you set bread dough out to proof too long.)

While the kids were working on their creations, I gave Cloud Clay a once-over. Here are my impressions:

• Soft, almost foamy feel.
• There is a mild odor. It’s hard to describe, but it’s not entirely unpleasant.
• The colors are really vibrant and fun! (There are 8 colors.)
• Fairly easy to roll out with a clay roller, and cut very well with mini cookie-cutters.
• Great price point, around $3.50 USD for 4 oz. ( It’s comparable to Model Magic by Crayola, which is usually at least a dollar more for the colored clays.)
• Not great for color-mixing. (More on that next review.)

So, after an hour or so of craftiness, here are the two projects my kids made:

I’m also pleased to announce that clean up was super-simple! Since the clay is so elastic, there are no crumbly bits! If your kids play with either Play-Doh or polymer clay, you’ll know what a lovely mess that can be. But with Cloud Clay, there was no sticky residue on the table or crumbs to contend with. Yay!

Also, when asked, both my kids said that they liked the clay and would play with it again. My little one was also thrilled the next day when the sculptures were dry and she could actually play with them. So far, they are still intact, too- which means that Cloud Clay has great tensile strength, as well as being super light-weight.

So for the first part of our review-for kids- I’m saying it’s a winner. Now I’m excited to try it out for some more “arty” applications. Stay tuned!

Any questions? Comments? Things you want me to try?

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About Jenny

Chief Craft Test Dummy, Craft Evangelist, Founder, Editor, bottle-washer, trouble-maker, and creative whirlwind.

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