Originally posted on DeviantArt for Artisan Craft Week for projecteducate.
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Hey there! I’m Jessica of JSThreads, and I make whimsical polymer clay dragons. I’ve been sculpting for five years this month, so I feel pretty confident in the ability of my skill and the information I can impart on you. Today, I wanted to share with you the basics of polymer clay.
By the end of this post, you’ll have insight into every step I go through when making a sculpture, and I’ll pass on information I wish I would have had when I first started. At the end, I’ll leave you with some of my favorite resources that I turn to when I need help too.
Polymer clay is a wonderful medium to work with because it has so many applications. You can “specialize” in polymer clay and never run out of projects, but you can also use polymer clay in tandem with other mediums! Polymer clay and resin work wonderfully together. I’ve also seen yarn artists make things out of clay to accent their makes (like buttons). You can create anything from beads, to charms, to sculptures with polymer clay, so it’s able to suit your creating preferences.
Another thing I *love* about polymer clay is that you don’t need special equipment in order to sculpt. Got an oven or toaster oven? Then you can work with polymer clay! No kiln needed here.
Baking Source
While it’s true, you don’t need special equipment for polymer clay, before I get into any of the basics, I want to talk a little bit about the baking source.You can use either a regular oven or toaster oven for polymer clay, and you do not need an oven specifically dedicated to polymer clay. Do not try to bake polymer clay in the microwave!
Polymer clay bakes at a fairly low temperature, but it needs to have consistent heat or it will not cure properly. Some ovens can have spikes in temperature. If it gets too hot, your clay could burn. If it doesn’t get hot enough for long enough, your clay won’t cure completely. Your oven may even tell you that it’s at the correct temperature but really runs 5 or 10 degrees above or below the ideal temperature.
I highly recommend this test as the first step so you know what your oven is doing. It doesn’t take very long, it doesn’t require expensive equipment, and it provides a peace of mind. To do this, you’ll need an oven thermometer (you can buy them at Walmart and I’m sure at equivalent kinds of stores). Place the thermometer in your oven or toaster oven and set it to preheat for whatever temperature you intend to bake your clay at. This temperature depends on the brand of clay you’re using, but we’ll touch on that later in this article.
Once your oven is preheated, check the temperature of the oven thermometer. Leave it in the oven, as we’ll be checking it periodically. Is the thermometer saying the same temperature as what you set it for? If you set it for 275 degrees Fahrenheit and it’s reading 280, you can set your oven to 270 and it should cook at the proper temperature. If your thermometer is coming in at a lower temperature, you can bump it up to a higher temperature.
When your oven thermometer is reading the correct temperature, it’s time to check the consistency. To do this, let your oven sit for 5 to 10 minutes and check the temperature again. Did it change? Is it the same? Repeat this step for at least 30 minutes at different time intervals. Make sure you give your oven time to “normalize” in temperature after opening up the door. This will give you insight into how much your oven spikes in temperature.
Be sure to note these temperatures so you can figure out what you’ll need to set it to for the optimal curing. If you’re unable to find equipment that can hold the needed temperature for long enough, you may want to try air dry clay!
Clay Brands
There are lots of different clay brands to choose from, but it will also depend on where you live. As a resident of the U.S., I typically see 3 main brands of polymer clay in craft stores: Sculpey III, Premo, and Fimo. These also happen to be some of the go-to clay people tend to use, but there are many others too: Kato, Pardo, and Cernit, to name a few. These, along with Fimo, are usually looked at as higher end polymer clay. They are also more expensive.
It’ll also depend on what store you’re at too, and you can of course purchase from online suppliers. It’s nice to buy clay in person so you can feel if it’s old (within reason since there are certain clay brands that are harder than others)—if you pinch the package and can make an indent in the clay, it’s in its prime. Buying online is better for bulk buying since it’s usually cheaper. Some online clay suppliers include Polymer Clay Express and Polymer Clay Superstore. You can also find polymer clay at online art supply stores as well!
If you’re a beginner, I would recommend starting out with Sculpey III. It’s cheaper so you don’t have to feel like you’re spending a lot to try out polymer clay. Sculpey III is also a softer clay, which may or may not be good depending on your preference, but it’s a nice place to start to develop the feel for clay.
What you ultimately choose will depend on what preferences you develop. For a very long time, I only used Sculpey III because it was the easiest on my hands. I was having a hard time with getting rid of fingerprints, however, and I realized I need something that was a little firmer. Premo was the “next step,” and it worked pretty well. My perfect clay recipe includes Premo in a color and Sculpey III translucent to add a bit of softness without affecting the color of the clay.
When you start the polymer clay journey, you’ll probably go through a similar process of finding your ideal texture. If you buy a block of clay and you realize you don’t like the way it feels, try a different brand!
Colors
When it comes to polymer clay, there are 2 main approaches to creating a colorful sculpture: using already pigmented clay or painting over cured clay like Super Sculpey (a beige clay). This will depend on your personal preference and where your strengths/passions are. For example, I’m not a strong painter outside of basic details, so I use pigmented clay, and if the project calls for it, I’ll paint details (i.e. leopard spots).
Colored polymer clay can also be mixed to create custom colors. When you mix colors, you obtain more natural and unique hues which will help make your project even more special. It also has a very practical application. By mixing up your own colors, you won’t have to buy every color under the sun but instead reach a variety of colors by stocking up on a handful.
If you choose this route, I would say the minimum clay you’d need to have for decent color flexibility is magenta, yellow, blue, white, and black. However, I find that getting ideal shades of bright blue is very hard to do, so I tend to buy a few different colors of blue. Adding black to darken a color will mute it slightly, so if you’re looking to have a brighter secondary color, you may want to stock up on green, purple, and orange.
My clay stash typically has:
- lots of: black, white, and translucent clay (I buy these in the half pound blocks at a local craft store)
- many blocks of magenta, yellow, blue, and red (I like to have 3 or so of the little blocks on hand)
- some green, purple, and orange so I can start with brighter secondary colors and mix other colors in to customize them
- specialty colors or effect clays like Fimo gemstone clay, pearls, metallics (maybe a block or 2 at a time since these are used the least)
As you mix colors, you’ll see what appeals or doesn’t appeal to you, and you’ll develop an eye for figuring out what colors you want to mix, and what colors you may want to start with and add to.
A fun tool to use for mixing your own colors is clay recipes. You can find many of these online put together by various creators. Here are some creators who publish color recipes: Polymer Clay Central, Kater’s Acres, and Sculpey. I’ve published a few color recipes on my blog as well, and this is something I want to grow in the future. I mix more intuitively, however, so I don’t measure out ratios of colors for my recipes; I have a general sense of what I need and then I add bits of color to adjust to make something I’m satisfied with. While it means I can’t replicate exact colors, I think it helps make each dragon extra special, even if they’re based on the same idea or design 
.
.Depending on what clay brand you use, you may also notice a change in the color between raw and cured clay. I’ve heard that some of the more expensive clay may not change as much, but for me, I always know I need to mix my clay a little lighter than I want it to be because it darkens up slightly once baked.
If you’re looking to match a color exactly, you’ll want to mix up a batch of the color and bake up a swatch to make sure it’s matching as you’d like. If it’s off, adjust your batch as needed and bake a new sample until you’re happy with the color. Light colors of clay, particularly translucent ones, can become darker and turn brownish if you bake them multiple times, so if that’s important to your sculpture, keep that in mind! Here’s a wonderful article showing some tests for clay before and after baking.
If you decide to paint your polymer clay, using acrylic paint will be your best bet. I typically go with the multisurface paint so I can make sure it will work well on my clay. If in doubt, swatch some paint on your clay to see how it dries! There are many brands at many different stores. You don’t need anything fancy for painting either. I usually buy paint from Walmart.
You can paint on clay either before or after baking it; acrylic paint can go into the oven with the clay since it bakes at a low temperature. I like to paint after my piece has baked only so I don’t smush up the details in my sculpture while I’m painting. Once you’re finished painting your sculpture, i also highly recommend sealing your creation so that the paint is protected. I’ll have a whole section talking about this later on.
Armature
Armature is something primarily used for sculptures, so if you think you’re going to stick to making charms, jewelry, or other thinner works, this will not apply to you. Armature is a structure inside of the clay—you build up the clay around this structure. It’s important for a few reasons:
- It provides stability and strength for your sculpture while it’s baking.
- It helps ensure a more complete cure.
- It allows for you to use less clay in your sculpture, so you save on the cost per piece and it’s a lighter sculpt.
Now what exactly is an armature? Typically, it’s made from aluminum foil, wire, or a combination of the 2. Some sculptors even use a clay like Super Sculpey or Apoxie Sculpt to reinforce their armature for the most reliability.
Another reason why armature is important has to do with the baking step. Polymer clay softens in the oven and doesn’t actually harden up until it cools down. As it’s baking, parts of your sculpture that aren’t properly supported will lose their shape and sag, which can be pretty disappointing to find once you pull the piece out of the oven.
You may choose to do an entire armature for your sculpture, or you may supplement with bits and pieces. A lot of it will come down to trial and error and seeing what works best for what you create. It does take a bit to get used to, but I highly recommend incorporating this into your sculpting process.
For me, I use an aluminum foil core that allows for the head and body to be a single piece. I use wire in the wings to attach them to the body of my dragons. I’m not very good at twisting up wire to create an armature, so I usually avoid working with a heavy wire armature unless absolutely necessary. EmilySculpts has made some resources that are great at going into the steps for creating a more detailed and heavily wired armature. When it comes to standing dragons, I do use wire in the legs and arms in order to give them enough strength to support the body of my sculpture. I’ve created my own half-and-half technique for that, so if you’d like to see that in detail, you can visit my armature blog post.
Conditioning
When it comes time to actually work with the clay, you’ll want to do something known as conditioning before getting to work. If you mix your colors, you’ll be doing this at the same time, but if you work straight from the package, don’t forget this step!
Conditioning the clay is just working it in order to thoroughly mix everything together. Components in the clay need to be mixed in order to help make sure the clay is curing its best. You can do this by mushing it around in your hands. Pull it apart, squish it back together, twist it, fold it over itself, anything you need to go in order to have every bit of the clay mix with itself. You can’t over condition clay, but you can under condition it, so do this for several minutes at the least.
This is the part that becomes really hard on a lot of sculptors’ hands. If you find it worth it and end up using clay a lot or for a while, you may want to invest in some equipment to help with this part of the process. You can use a pasta machine (dedicated to clay; don’t use it for clay and food!) to condition clay (it’s also nice for rolling out even thicknesses of clay or creating gradients). You can also buy a press that will condition the clay. I have a NEVERknead that I now use whenever I condition clay, and it’s been amazing! I would wait to purchase something like this until you know clay is for you, however, and if you’re only using it occasionally, I would say use a pasta machine if you really need something, or just condition it by hand. It is definitely not a necessary tool!
Working with Clay
Sculpting itself comes down to building up shapes and smoothing it out. Except for a couple of times in art classes in school, I had never really worked with clay before I started all of this. I have no formal training, just practice and experimentation. You can find lots of tutorials online showing you how to sculpt animals, flowers, and other creations.
If you find your clay is too soft, you can try leaching out the extra “moisture” by flattening it out between 2 sheets of paper. If you find your clay is too hard or crumbly, you can add in some Sculpey III translucent or liquid clay and mix thoroughly. Polymer clay will not cure without heat, so you can pick up projects and continue to work with them over several days, unlike air dry clay.
I think an important part of the process is just learning how the clay works and feels in your hands, so start with something small. My very first creations were little dragon head pendants. This consisted of pretty simple shapes (an oval head, cones for the horns, folded circles for the ears), so it was easy for me to put together and try it out.
In the beginning, I also think there’s a lot to be said for mimicking things around you. When I was learning how to work with clay, I created based on things I was already familiar with: a plant dragon from DragonVale, a dragon tutorial from Dragons & Beasties, and other things like that. It can be freeing to not have to worry about how something looks just so you can get lost in the process and understand how to create shapes.
And then when you’ve gained confidence and understanding on how to construct a sculpture, charm, pendant, etc., it’s time to branch out and do your own thing. This is an art community, so there’s plenty of inspiration all around! Just make sure you aren’t copying someone else’s work for profit.
Tools
While you’re learning how to work with polymer clay, you can easily use everyday items to add texture/effects and work with your clay. Things like toothpicks, cookie cutters, and foil can be used as sculpting tools. Just be sure to only use items you don’t plan to use with food again. It’s a great way to repurpose items you may not use often. With that said, there is a list of tools I do recommend having:
- a craft blade (like an exacto knife)
- a needle tool (toothpick)
- a roller (you can use anything that’s cylindrical)
Some other tools that are my favorite to use are:
- silicone tipped tools to help blend tight areas where fingers can’t fit
- a pasta machine for creating even sheets of clay or easier gradients
- the NEVERknead
- circular cutters
- ball point/dotting tools
Don’t forget that your most important tools will be your fingers. The tools do not necessarily make the sculptor, so don’t feel like you need to buy *ALL* the tools and the most expensive ones. I definitely have more than I will probably ever use, but it took me getting to this point to realize that. There are definitely tools you’ll come across that you prefer over others, so use what works for you and not necessarily what you see other people using. Don’t stress out too much about this while you’re just starting out.
Prepping for the Oven
You may have noticed that while you were working on your piece, bits of dust and fuzz stuck to it. It’s very hard to avoid this, but there are things we can do to help adjust. If you’re ready to learn more about keeping polymer clay clean, you can check out a blog post I wrote recently about it. One of the early things I learned about this topic is from NerdECrafter. You can use rubbing alcohol and a cotton swab to clean up dust bits. Rub the damp cotton swab where the dust is, and it will come off. This method also smooths over fingerprints.
If applicable, the inside armature will help immensely with keeping the structure intact while baking, but you may also want to add additional support on the outside. This can be done by using extra foil or polyester fiberfill to prop up questionable areas. Stick it under anything that defies gravity and in places you’re not sure about.
Baking
Now that you’ve played with the clay and created something, you’re ready to bake it! You’ll need to place your piece onto a baking surface. You can use something like a baking sheet, a ceramic tile, a pizza stone, or an aluminum pan. Again, be sure to make this a dedicated craft item and don’t cook food on it once you’ve used it for clay.
Once you’ve picked your surface, you’ll want to line it with parchment paper or an index card. Index cards can bake in the oven at the low temperature clay needs to cure and not catch on fire. It’s important to place something like this on your baking surface so that the clay that’s touching it doesn’t have a shiny spot where it’s cured against the smooth surface. You can use these over and over again (they’ll discolor over time, but they will continue to do the trick).
Make sure your oven is preheated before you place your piece in the oven, and let it cool completely after it’s baked for long enough. This will help your piece get an optimal curing period.
To see how long the clay needs to cure and at what temperature, you can find that on the clay package’s instructions. Sculpey III and Premo, for example, need to bake at 275 degrees Fahrenheit and should bake for 15 minutes per a 1/4″ thickness of clay. As long as your oven is set to the proper temperature, clay can bake much longer than the time on the package (the minimum bake time), so it’s always best to pad that time. If you have a pendant that’s exactly 1/4″ thick, you may want to bake for 20 minutes. 1″ thick pieces technically need an hour, but you may want to do an hour and ten minutes.
This is also why it’s important to have armatures on your thicker pieces, as it will help reduce the amount of time needed in the oven and can help you make sure that it’s curing nicely. For my dragons, I typically bake them for 40 minutes at 275 degrees Fahrenheit to account for the thicker parks of the arms/legs. The thinner areas where my armature is at, like the head and body, will not burn at this temperature since my oven stays fairly consistent at 275 degrees.
Sanding
Once your piece is baked, you may still find dust, fuzz, or fingerprints you want to get rid of. Wet sanding polymer clay is a great way to make polymer clay very smooth and provide an extra way to clean up your piece. Wet sanding is done to keep the clay dust down so you aren’t breathing that in, and I’ve also heard it helps with scratching.
This is not a required step by any means, but I wanted to include a short snippet about it as a complete look to the sculpting process. If you’re interested in diving into the world of sanding polymer clay, I have a step-by-step tutorial on my blog.
Note: I only recommend using the sanding technique if you are going to glaze (seal) your polymer clay at the end. Unless you’re a buffing fiend, which I’m not, you will see a color difference in the clay where you’ve sanded, and glazing the clay seems to get rid of that. If you aren’t sure if your glaze will do the same, test a swatch before sanding your beautiful piece.
Finishing
To finish off your polymer clay piece, it’s time to add some glaze. I think glazing a piece makes for a nice finished look, but there are many creators who prefer the matte look of unglazed clay. It comes down to personal preference unless you’ve sanded or treated your clay (painting, for example). If that’s the case, you’ll either want to do it to hide the scratching or protect your hard work.
I also love how glaze deepens the color of polymer clay. The biggest difference is with black clay. Unfortunately it does not show up on camera at all, but black clay without glaze looks kind of like charcoal, or even a really dark gray, and black clay after glaze becomes a very deep, rich color.
There are many options for you to choose from when it comes to picking a glaze. There are clay specific glazes created by Sculpey and Fimo, or you can use other art sealers. It should be water based so it doesn’t react with the clay. An amazing resource for helping you decide what glaze to use can be found on Blue Bottle Tree. For me, I have decided to stick with polyurethane (water based). I’ve been very happy with how it turns out, and it comes in different finishes like gloss, semi-gloss, and satin, so you can have less or more shine.
I’ve tried the Sculpey glaze and triple thick, and I personally did not like either of them as much (and I really, really didn’t like triple thick), but I know many people who do use these. If you decide to glaze your pieces, find something that appeals to you and give it a try. When you’ve used it up, you may decide you want to try out a different kind. It’s all part of the journey!
Note: You do not need to add glaze to protect polymer clay in any form; it’s purely aesthetic. The only time you should glaze your polymer clay for protection is when you add some kind of treatment to it like paint or powder pigments.
Resources
I wanted to include a section with my favorite resources. There is a lot of really helpful information shared in the polymer clay community, and it makes for a wonderful medium to learn how to work in.
You can also find so many tutorials on YouTube and Pinterest, so don’t hesitate to look something up there, whether it’s how to make something specific, how to create a certain texture, or what can go in the oven to bake alongside polymer clay.
I also have a blog on my website where I post weekly, and the majority of that content is tutorials. I’m always open to requests too, so if there’s something you want to see or learn more about, leave a comment or send me a message!
Please keep in mind that while I tried to touch on just about every part of the polymer clay process, there is SO MUCH MORE to the world of polymer clay! This is just meant to scratch the surface and provide you helpful information about the whole process in one place. You can add all sorts of neat stuff to clay to create awesome effects or multimedia creations, so get out there and start making!