Make Cold Porcelain Clay Beads & Wooden Toy Abacus (Soroban)

I needed to make specific coloured beads for my wooden soroban / suan-pan / abacus.
This wooden abacus would make a great gift any child would enjoy playing with!
Learning abacus is a fun way to introduce Bill Handley's Fun and Fast Speed Math Method.
I like his Speed Math method as it is stress free, simple and fast and so much easier to get the correct answer everytime!

This instructable shows the new recipe I developed for the abacus beads and how
I constructed the abacus from wood in under an hour. The beads took a few days to dry thoroughly.

After several experiments with the Cold Porcelain Clay recipe, I accidentally
discovered a good recipe for making beads. Previously, everything seemed
to crack and shrink and warp the next day.

This new recipe (modification of the bird's next recipe and uses two additional ingredients)
can be used for millefiori beads as well, which I'll put up some examples soon. This new recipe dries a
lot faster, after 30 minutes without cling wrap it was drying out. It took a week to dry thoroughly
and shrank a bit.

And the best part, I must say is - no baking necessary! You can keep the colours separate
so your design will have consistent harmony to your artwork, you can make
canes and even millefiori with greater ease and even skinner blends through a pasta machine.

This instructable will show you how to make mixed media beads with the new Cold Porcelain Clay recipe (3rd version).

Watch the high definition tutorial below:

Step 1: New Cold Porcelain Clay Recipe

Extra Sticky Cold Porcelain Clay Recipe :

1 cup cornflour
2 cups pva (wood) glue
3/4 cup water
2 tbl glycerine



Mix water and glue in pot. Boil on medium heat for 2 minutes. (This helps boil off the alcohol)
Stir in cornflour mixed with a bit of water, and remaining ingredients.

** You might also wish to microwave all ingredients in a bowl for one minute. First place in bowl of boiling water, glycerine, pva wood glue. Sitr until gelatine crystals and cream of tartar is dissolved. Stir in flour then microwave for 1 - 2 minutes. Cover with plastic. Knead when cool.

Leave overnight till less sticky (preferably a week) and ready to use.

An easier option that's quicker than 2-minute noodles in a cup - mix all dry ingredients together then add boiling water and wet ingredients. Knead well, adding more cornstarch as needed.

NB: This recipe resulted in a sticky mixture which is difficult to handle,
but simply knead in 70 - 50% more flour after cooking, it has a great texture.

Knead thoroughly to work the gluten in the cornstarch into a lovely pliable dough.

The added bonus to using the larger pva ratio in this recipe was no cracks!

Comments

[sabu.dawdy]

i made porcelain clay with recipe 3 in microwave.. however my dough did not cook completely as my bowl was oval .. today is the second day of that dough. it is pliable but its sticky slightly. any advice?

[jennybotha]

Didn't go through the steps for the different recipes, as I was only interested in the first one. See you mention gelatine and in the method but not in the ingredients list. How much do you use of these. Do let me know as I'd love to make this for my clay flowers. Thanks

[Gomi Romi]

Thanks for your question, I tested using gelatine and non-gelatine and they later didn't make a difference. I used about 1 tbl diluted in hot water. Later I found out about using mostly glycerine and less water to prevent cracks, so I'd go with glycerine instead of gelatine.

[jennybotha]

Thanks for sharing that info. So did the clay dry without cracks when you used the glycerine?? Used to make clay flower arrangements for the family and friends wedding and celebration cakes i p o icing ones. ( that way the flowers last forever ) Now want to make a lot again for my display cabinet--- just for the fun of it. Thanks again, Gomi.

[mrs.cjmurrell]

I'm excited to try this recipe! I do have a question though... when you leave the clay out overnight, is it covered? Uncovered? Airtight? I just want to do all I can to set this up for success and I wasn't positive how to leave it overnight. Your recipe is appreciated and as I said, I'm very excited to try it! Thanks for your submission!

-Christian

[Gomi Romi]

Hi there! sorry for the late reply.. I usually cover it with plastic wrap immediately after cooking. A viewer on another site recommends using a lot of glycerine and hardly any water to prevent cracking.

[Gomi Romi]

You're welcome! I wrap the clay up with plastic wrap and keep it in the fridge, that way it will last longer. Also a person below said to use glycerine and less water to prevent cracks. I looked at some puppet hands I sculpted last year and its still pretty solid.

[freqgirl]

You said corn flour was the same as corn starch earlier but it isn't. They are two separate and different things. Which one is it exactly, corn starch or corn flour? I want to make sure and buy the correct things before I waste a lot of money trying to make this.

[Gomi Romi]

I would try corn starch first, i think in different countries its different things. I used cornstarch that is finely ground and the dough you make looks very white. It's around 99c for a packet in Australia.

[sabaku no gaara]

Can I make this without using gelatine?

[Gomi Romi]

Sure, I tried several experimental recipes, it worked without gelatine. I think adding that tiny extra bit of playdough clay helped prevent a lot of shrinkage. Too much of the playdough creates a bumpy, lumpy surface (could've blended it perhaps)

[sabaku no gaara]

Playdough Clay?
Do you mean plasticine?

[Gomi Romi]

The waterbased clay here
http://www.instructables.com/id/Playdough-Paintings-1/