The simple combination of fine-grained minerals and water will produce endless artistic possibilities. Sculptors won’t deny that clay has the potential to create nearly anything imaginable. American Clay is no different.

With such a versatile product, any experienced applicator will agree that American Clay can produce a wide array of finished styles. Everyday, our application gurus are discovering new techniques to produce completely different looks and impressions. Blending, spraying and layering American Clay Earth Plasters are just a few ways to achieve entirely new and distinct effects.

Whether you’ve taught yourself or taken our artistic class-offered only at our Albuquerque Headquarters-you have most likely discovered the art of stenciling with American Clay. Over the years, we’ve created a variety of techniques just for stenciling. Stenciling has become so popular among our customers that beginning in January 2008, American Clay will be supplying an assortment of stencils for purchase.

Listed below are five of our tried and true stenciling techniques.

The wall-board industry is continually bringing new and interesting products to the market. In American Clay’s Research and Development Lab, we try to test as many substrate materials as possible. We have found two wall-board products that will present problems. These two products do not tolerate water and, since American Clay Earth Plaster is applied wet, these products should not be used. The two products are listed below:

• E-Z Taping Systems™ Mudless Drywall Tape: This product is a paper tape with an adhesive backing. The adhesive replaces filling the drywall seam with joint compound. The paper tape has 1/8″ holes which are evenly spaced. We found that the combination of no joint compound in the wallboard seams and the holes in the paper create a two-fold problem: The water in the plaster causes the paper tape to swell, and the holes in the tape exacerbate this effect. Without the joint compound as filler in the wallboard seams, more water is absorbed into the Mudless Drywall Tape. This swelling of the Mudless Drywall Tape and then its shrinking as the plaster dries out will lead to cracking, and in some cases, the paper adhesive will come loose.
• Lightweight Joint Compounds and Topping Joint Compounds like “USG Lightweight Plus 3″: These products are classified as lightweight all-purpose joint compounds for finishing gypsum panel joints. Because they are lightweight all-purpose joint compounds they absorb water easily. The water from the wet earth plaster is absorbed by the joint compound. This causes the joint compound to lose its structure, leaving a loose substrate, which can lead to bonding problems in the joint compound. If you have used a Lightweight All Purpose Joint Compound on your wallboard it should be sealed or a paint primer applied over it before ACE Earth Plaster is applied.

We are continually testing new and different substrates and applications with American Clay products, and will keep you updated on any problems we discover.

Tim White
Product Development
American Clay Enterprises, LLC

Filming for American Clay’s new application video came to a successful end late last week. Eye Candy Cinema—an award-winning production company—wrapped with over 16 hours of footage and are now working on boiling it down to a short, concise video of less than 30 minutes.

Scheduled to be available in January 2008, the film will have a stronger focus on application techniques, more so than American Clay’s current video. Various techniques and common problems are explained and demonstrated, focusing on substrate preparation and compression, as well as repair techniques and the use of spraying equipment for large commercial jobs.

Everyone here at American Clay feels very pleased with Eye Candy Cinema’s work and are looking forward to the finished product. Look for news here early next year for the new video.

Congratulations to Mark McIntosh of McIntosh Construction in Vero Beach, Florida, on winning a trip to Santa Fe, NM! Along with a hotel stay in the capital city, the prize also includes a dinner, a spa treatment from Body and a tour of American Clay.

We hope you have a wonderful trip!

We would like to congratulate the Minneapolis Institute of Fine Finishes for making American Clay now available in ten Hirshfield’s locations throughout Minnesota. These new locations are listed in our “Where to Buy” section on our website.

The Institute is also providing American Clay workshops, color selectors, product samples and literature at all stores. For dates of Hirshfield’s upcoming classes, go to the “Hands-on Workshops” page of our website.

American Clay also recently had great success at the Minneapolis 2007 Home and Garden Show. To learn about the Minneapolis 2008 Home and Garden Show go here.

Greenbuild Expo 2007 sprang to life yesterday, making its presence known all throughout Chicago. Signs cover the city welcoming the show and, with over 20,000 attendees, Chicago seems to be solely inhabited by people wanting to make the world greener.

Greenbuild is surpassing many attendees’ expectations. The sheer volume of information available is simply astounding. And, with keynote speaker Bill Clinton starting off the show in front of 7,000 people, inspiration is in the air. Some are comparing it to Woodstock 1969, “when the fences came down and everyone was welcome. But in this case, we really can change the world (or at least transform the market),” wrote Lauren Kuritz on Greenbuild’s online journal.

American Clay is in the thick of it, with Carol Baumgartel, Croft Elsaesser and John Day manning our new and beautiful booth. Its creation was a collaborative effort and quite different from anything American Clay has ever made for a show. Each surface shows a different application technique—everything from a simple sandy-finished Loma to the more advanced hard-trowel-polished Loma topped with a pigmented Mud Glue atomized through a stencil.

In addition to the booth, is a board of six different stencil techniques, including “proud stenciling”—where the stencil is raised—and “embedded stenciling”—where the stencil is covered with Porcelina, sponged to reveal it, then burnished.

The show runs through today and concludes tomorrow. For up-to-date happenings, go to Greenbuild 365 to watch filmed speeches and to read the online journal. Also, watch here for a final review of the show.

Although interior designers have a great deal of influence on our interior air quality, they cannot be held solely responsible for maintaining healthy air. YOU have to do most of the work. Even if you have American Clay in every room of your home, all benefits quickly diminish if you lack healthy indoor habits. For example, don’t expect to have superior indoor air if you smoke indoors or rarely tend to clean. Maintaining good, breathable air takes work, but is far from impossible.

On average, Americans spend 90 percent of their time indoors. With indoor air quality commonly more polluted than many highly industrialized cities, it isn’t hard to imagine why chronic respiratory diseases—such as asthma—are so common. Cleaning products, building materials, certain home furnishings and lack of ventilation are all common sources for high levels of pollutants including carbon monoxide, lead and the highly volatile organic compound (VOC), formaldehyde. However, lowering levels of these pollutants takes only a few minutes of your day and gives you a great reason to do a bit of remodeling.

The following list has been complied from Blue Egg and the Environmental Protection Agency on how to better the air you breathe indoors.

• Ventilate, ventilate, ventilate!!! Ventilation is the most effective thing you can do and simply opening a few windows can go a long way. Keeping fresh air flowing through your home dilutes indoor gases, lessening their potency. This is especially important while painting, cooking, cleaning and other high pollutant-causing activities.
• Clean often and with smart products. While regularly vacuuming and cleaning prevents toxins from building up, you may be replacing those toxins with new ones if you use smelly cleaning products. Artificial fragrances commonly contain phthalates, a group of chemicals that interfere with hormone systems.
• Switch to natural cleaning products. Your kitchen is full of great cleaners—baking soda, vinegar, lemon juice and olive oil. Here are some great green cleaning tips.
• Replace carpets with a greener alternative. You know that “new carpet” smell? Well, that’s the smell of adhesives and other chemicals releasing VOCs into your home. While low-VOC carpet is available, carpets also act a giant sponge for holding pollutants. Check out Green Living’s article on “Rethinking Carpet” to get the full story.

These are only a few of the quick and easy ways to improve indoor air quality. Both Blue Egg and the EPA provide a myriad of information on the topic on their websites.

Bettering indoor air isn’t limited to your home, either. Many offices have the same problem of low quality air, a contributor to Sick Building Syndrome. If you think your office may need to green up its act, read up on the topic here.

Hacienda Parade of homes Showhouse, Santa Fe

“Very exciting news! We have yet another new sponsor, with an amazing “green” product; American Clay.

American Clay Enterprises has revolutionized the clay plaster industry by bringing their line of products into the modern world.

They have done extensive research and development of a product line that is by far one of the most superior plaster finishes….and it’s really gorgeous!

It is made from natural clays, recycled and reclaimed aggregates. It is non-dusting, mold and fade resistant, repairable, easy to work with and to apply. Its made right here in New Mexico. AND you can earn up to 4 LEED credits by using it.

The American Clay product is so perfect for The Dream Home; Evolution in Design and Technology project. We are very excited to showcase several different colors and finishes throughout the home.”

The versatile environment in which American Clay can exist is as malleable as the clay itself. Being a traditional building product, it works in conventional homes and offices, but also thrives beautifully in architecture’s more modern counterparts.

Plastering walls with mud is a technique that goes back thousands of years, finding early applicators in every corner of the world from the pharaohs of Egypt to the ancient Greeks. Research into these early projects has shown that the application methods and products used so long ago are strikingly similar to those of today, a fact acknowledging the long-term sustainability of earth plasters.

As the age of eco-modern architecture continues to take shape, many architects and builders are finding traditional building techniques and products to be exactly what they are looking for. For American Clay, this rang true in its application in one of the new, ultra-modern Museum Residences in Denver, CO, designed by architect Daniel Libeskind.

Local designer John Ronnberg and Deborah Hall worked together in creating an original approach to applying and finishing American Clay onto a feature wall in one of the Residence’s penthouses.

Using mostly white tones and going for a modern look, Hall “realized that it would be spectacular to take inspiration from nature and create striations as in a cliff face,” writes Hall. To create the major striations, blue tape was put on the walls in order to show which direction to apply swaths of uncolored Marittimo. Then, to create smaller striations, a wallpaper brush was used on the topcoat while it was still wet. By highly burnishing the topcoat of Sugar Loaf Porcelina, the brush marks were compressed down to create a visual texture.

Wrapping this pattern around the 1-foot thickness of the wall created the feeling that it was one huge rock, a feeling that both Ronnberg and Hall were worried could easily overpower the rest of the space. However, because of the choice of color and the subtleness of the texture, Hall writes, “it blends perfectly with the other elements in the space, and at the same time is a gorgeous focus.”