Liquid, translucent, and effects such as glow, glitter, transparent, stone, metallic, pastel, gemstone, pearl in the case of Fimo are available. As I’ve mentioned, for miniatures and models, where the size of the final item is key, this is a huge advantage.Īnother benefit over air-drying clay is the range of colors and types of clay available from popular polymer clay brands such as Fimo, Sculpey, Cernit, and Kato. However, polymer clay doesn’t contain clay or water, and when baked in a home oven, it sets hard without shrinking. If the size of the model is important, this can be a real challenge. Air-drying clay contains water, which is lost in the drying process, so models and creations often shrink. The biggest advantage over air-drying clay?įor modelling, one of the biggest advantages of polymer clay is that it doesn’t shrink in the drying process. Read on for more reasons why it’s better. which makes it more pliable and easy to work with and able to hold fine, delicate, details more easily than traditional air-drying clay. The PVC – a polymer hence the name – gives it strength and durability, while the plasticizer makes it more flexible and easy to shape. Polymer clay is made from a mixture of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and plasticizer. If you get bits of raw clay on your template while using it, clean it off or it could pull off parts of your veneer.Are you tired of using air-drying clay that cracks and crumbles? Have you been searching for a more versatile and durable option? Look no further than polymer clay! The point of a sharp #11 Xacto blade works well to cut the clay or a very thin, sharp sewing needle embedded into polymer clay. The template will gently stick to the clay, but I hold it securely with my fingers to make sure it doesn’t slip. To cut out the clay, I stick the veneer (or cane slice, in this example) to the glass. It’s so nice to see through it and have something more durable than card stock. The template can now be placed over a veneer to choose the best area to cut. When it’s cool, I cut out my shape with a sharp #11 Xacto blade. Then I bake the clay according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Larger pieces of paper buckle when they’re sprayed which makes it difficult to get the paper to lie flat for a nice transfer. When transferring a larger image, I hold my printout up in the air, spray the back with water and wait a minute for the water to be absorbed before I lay it down on the clay. If you wait, the paper will dry and you’ll have to rub off fibers sticking to the clay. No waiting, no rubbing off the paper, no excess fibers to remove, no alcohol. Just as air bubbles can prevent a good transfer, too much water seems to interfere with a good contact between the toner and the clay. If it gets too wet, I squeegee off the excess water with my fingers or dab it off with a paper towel. If there’s not enough water, I spray it again, but I avoid getting it soaking wet. The goal is to make a really good contact between the toner and the clay. I press the water into the paper with my fingertips until all air bubbles and white spots are gone, the paper is uniformly damp and translucent so the image clearly shows through the paper. Then I spray the back of the paper with a fine mist of water from an atomizer or a Ranger Mini Mister. I place the printout upside down on the clay so the toner is in direct contact with the clay. If your shape isn’t symmetrical, you can flip it over to make a mirror image before printing it out. It must be printed with a laser printer or laser copier, or it won’t transfer. In this case, it’s a simple petal shape that I drew on the computer and printed on my laser printer. Next, I transfer my drawing onto the clay. A thin sheet of translucent clay ready for the transfer. I lay the sheet of clay on card stock so it’s all ready to bake because I don’t want to move it again and possibly distort the clay and the transfer I’m about to make onto it. My experience with other brands of translucent clay has been that they plaque or turn yellow, but if it’s sheeted really thin, it might not matter. I start with a sheet of Pardo translucent clay the thickness of card stock. I also wanted to see through to the clay underneath the template to choose the best place to cut. I’d been making them out of card stock, but the edges fray with use and the shapes become rounded and larger. I like to make my own shapes, so I decided to make my own templates out of translucent polymer clay. Often the templates available for sale are made of translucent colored plastic.
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