Homeschool Crew Review: ACTÍVA Products

My girls love doing art projects and were excited to have a chance to use and review the Rigid Wrap and CelluClay Quik-Sculpting Kit from ACTÍVA Products.  We also received the ACTÍVA Products' Favorite Sculpture KIDS CRAFTS eBook.






The Rigid Wrap and CelluClay Quik Sculpt Starter Kit ($11.90) contains 2-4" rolls of Rigid Wrap and 8 oz of CelluClay for making a variety of different types of projects.  The CelluClay is not clay at all.  It is a powdery material used for paper mache. To use the CelluClay, you measure an amount into a ziplock bag and add water to it.  When you close the bag and knead it, it combines the water and CelluClay to make your paper mache product.  After applying it needs at least 24 hours to dry. To use the Rigid Wrap, you cut several one inch pieces off of the roll, dip them in water and place them over the product you are using.  Rigid Wrap takes 15-20 minutes to dry.  Once the products are dry you can paint and decorate them however you wish.

The ACTÍVA Products' Favorite Sculpture KIDS CRAFTS eBook (29 pages) is available for free.  In it you will find color photos and instructions for 12 different projects you can make including:

Silly Spider
Bold Beads
Deadly Dinosaur
Beautiful Butterfly
Terrific Totem Pole
Piece of Cake
Egyptian Sarcophagus
Erupting Volcano
Mardi Gras Mask
Painted Pumpkin
Peppermint Candy Bowl
Snowman Ornament

We decided to make two different projects from the eBook.  The first project, the butterfly, used the Rigid Wrap.  The back of the eBook contains a few templates so we printed out the butterfly, traced it onto some cardboard and cut it out.  Next we cut the Rigid Wrap into pieces. It left a powdery substance on the table, but it was easy to clean up.

They dipped the Rigid Wrap into a bowl of water and placed it over the cardboard butterflies.

We had to let the first layer dry a little before adding the second layer.

After the second layer was dry they were able to paint their butterflies.(Emmie ran off with hers before I could get a picture.)  They were impressed with the results.

The second project we did was the dinosaur and it used the CelluClay.  We traced the template onto a piece of cardboard and cut it out.  Then we mixed the CelluClay.  This was a little tricky because it does not say in the instructions in the eBook how much water to use and there were no instructions in the box for using the CelluClay.  The eBook instructions for the dinosaur said to mix 2.5 cups of CelluClay in a ziplock bag.  I found on the website a tips and tricks section that said for 1 lb of CelluClay to mix 32 oz of water.  So I used  2.5 cups of CelluClay and  added 5 cups of water.  This was way too much water.  I had to add more and more CelluClay and still it was watery.  I finally got it to what I thought was a good consistency and then I had way too much CelluClay.  I think maybe we were supposed to have 2.5 cups total after adding the water.  The extra I stored in a Ziplock bag. After we applied the it took several days for it to dry before it could be painted.

We had fun with our Rigid Wrap and CelluClay and would use it again in the future. I think you can make some really interesting projects with these two products.  I loved the projects that were in the eBook, they were very creative and appealed to both boys and girls. I love that they included colored photos.  I think some of the instructions should be a little more specific.  It would be helpful to include the amount of water you need on each of the  CelluClay projects and also about how long to allow the Rigid Wrap to dry before adding more layers. 

To see what my Crew Mates had to say, stop by the Crew Blog!