I got polymer clay for Christmas, fully intending to experiment with it right away. Well, you know how time gets away from one... but I finally got to it a few weeks ago with my cousin in law Charisse. After a few mishaps trying to work with clay that was excessively old, hard, and overly crumbly, we discovered that the other box of color samples I had was much softer and more workable. Everything went much more smoothly after that.
The basic principle of working with polymer clay is you work it in your hands until it is soft and pliable, mixing together two colors if desired to lighten or darken the clay. Then you shape it how you want it to look (we have some wax working tools to do details) and bake it in a toaster oven. With Sculpey III clay, the directions say to bake 15 minutes for every quarter inch thick the sculpture is.
I must say, it was very tricky to get details as exact as I wanted, but eventually I was satisfied. And overall it was pretty fun, once we figured out that the clay wasn't supposed to crumble to bits when you kneaded it.
Here's what I ended up making:
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| Top row: Pikachu tails, wizard hats, piranha plants; bottom row: books, icicle things, and Kirbys. |
The piranha plants look like they are biting my ears when I wear them. :P
And here's what Charisse made:
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| Yoda, blue flowers, orange flowers, daisies, and R2D2 |
I was quite impressed with the detail she got with Yoda and R2D2, and the daisies are adorable too.
Any suggestions what I should make next?
