The best deals are usually from ceramics wholesalers. It's about a tenth of the price of a retail pottery place. This was 15 years ago, but when we did mud wrestling in a Tacoma WA nightclub, I bought 50 lb bags of OM-4 from a local wholesale shop for $6.50 a bag
the indoor mud pit we made, the clay was from kentucky mud works....it is located in lexington and louisville ky. they have a white clay mined in some place special or something...that is DIVINE. i ordered so much they gave me a free box and it was incredible. its already mixed adn i think you can order more powder to make it thicker. the shipping is pretty hefty....but if you could find something like this in your area, it wont be as bad.
there is a video in my store where i am coated in this stuff and get the white clay poured on me and its pretty fucking incredible! i would highly suggest it!!
wammerific.umd.net check out the indoor mud pit vids.! you will see what im talking about!! my right clicker is messed up to copy and paste links! hahah
MPV gets it from a local pottery supply/ceramics wholesaler. In the interest of saving time and money we pick it up ourselves. The initial load in 2011 filled a large SUV towing a four wheel trailer and a pickup truck driven by myself. If you ever mix a lot its easy to rent a large cement mixer from a construction equipment supply place. Since then it's much easier to run by and pick up a few hundred pounds as required.
You don't say where you're located in the US, but I used to buy clay fairly cheaply at Sheffield Pottery, in Sheffield, VT. It was on the order of $15 for a 50-lb bag of dry clay powder. The warehouse is on location, so you can drive there, pay, and they'll load it into your car.
You can never go wrong at the pottery shops. I used to be on a first name basis with the local shop after a few charity mud wrestling events. Obviously the further up the chain you go and/or bulk quantities, you may get it cheaper. Also, always go for the dry powder and mix water in yourself. No use to pay shipping on something that comes virtually free out of your tap. Only downside is clay (especially bentonite) typically needs about 24 hours to fully hydrate... so you're stuck there for a full day looking at your creation just waiting to dive in!
I bought bentonite clay at a farm & home store once (used to 'seal' farm ponds to keep from leaking) but it was a fairly coarse mix and some gravel/rocks in for good measure. So definitely stick to the pottery side! ...and if they give any 'mesh' options, the higher the number, the finer the powder, the smoother the mix. Though generally at the pottery level, it is all insanely smooth and creamy to wrestle around in! You can also shop a bit for different colors of clay ...rusty brown, creamy white, red, muddy brown, etc.
I typically used bentonite as the base (expands about 14x it's initial volume when wet, so makes a LOT of 'mud'. But it tends to be a bit translucent in coverage, so I threw in some 'old mill' ball clay for color. Believe 'OM-4' (old mill #4) ball clay might have been mentioned above.
Either way, stick to the pottery shops and you and your girl will be in for a real treat!
Love you, too
