Polymer Clay (My New Best Friend)
It’s not really clay and it’s not really my best friend. But it sure is a great medium for the creative spirit.
One of polymer clay’s biggest advantages: It can look like anything, including metal or leather. It’s quite inexpensive and can be used at home, cured at low temperatures in regular ovens (no microwaves!). All of this makes it perfect for small items - especially jewelry.
Like earth clay or ceramics, designs and textures can be impressed into the surface and other materials can be imbedded in polymer clay. Unlike those materials, polymer clay is not water soluble; it does not mix with water. That characteristic allows artists to use water as a release for molds or textured sheets. In addition to the colors of the clay and the combinations that can be mixed, polymer clay can be carved, dyed, painted, and stained. Mica in metallic clay colors can be “shifted” to create patterns. Sprinkling mica powders in clay adds sparkle.
Many of the techniques used by polymer clay artists are adaptations from other mediums. Makume gane is a 17th century Japanese metal working technique but polymer clay fans have adapted it to their medium. Instead of layers of different metals, different colors of polymer clay are layered and carved. A similar story for millefiori which means “a thousand flowers” in Italian. Millefiori is a 19th century term for a glass working technique much older than it’s name. In polymer clay “canes” or “snakes” of clay replace rods of glass to form and imbed designs in the final creation.
Polymer clay is full of surprises. Scratch the surface.
- chris owensTags: lampwork, makume gane, millefiori, polymer clay
