Stephanie Lee introduced me to plaster some years ago with her book Semi-precious Salvage.  It contains a fairly simple method of mixing and casting plaster (like the bird head in the photo below), that worked like a dream. In later books, she showed how to use plaster cloth.
Like this:

 While browsing in a bookstore I came across a piece in someone else's book (sorry, I didn't think to write it down), where she talked about using plaster cloth this way:

You wet and wrap the plaster cloth around a piece of cardboard, smoothing it out with your fingers, then laying down a strip of plaster cloth across, and, when it's dry, applying acrylic paint. To finish and give it a smooth, glowy look, Stephanie uses encaustic. I don't use wax or encaustic, so I finished it with thick gel medium.

If you like texture, this is one way to go.

 

Simplicity is the removal of the useless and the unnecessary--source unknown

The results: for me, worth waiting for. It was a very satisfying project even though it took two days from start to finish. I especially like the organic look

Ná bris do loigrín ar stól nach bhfuil i do shlí. (Do not break your shin on a stool that is not in your way.)

It's been a very busy day with things that had to be done. So busy that I haven't done any real work (my work). But I will sometime tonight, when this plaster piece is cured.

I got Stephanie Lee and Judy Wise's plaster book yesterday (Plaster Studio) and in the evening as I went through it, I wanted to make the plaster vessel. So.... I did. I had what I needed on hand. The plaster needs 24 hours to cure.

So here it is, curing away. Tonight I will sand it a little, paint it, and glue on a little bird head that I also cast in plaster, something I had learned already from Stephanie's previous book Semiprecious Salvage.

Ná bris do loigrín ar stól nach bhfuil i do shlí. (Do not break your shin on a stool that is not in your way.)