So my camera is being a bit of a jerk tonight and I couldn't take pictures of my Scupley collection, but I went ahead and started my project anyway!
Took me a good two hours to make the head of one of the characters I'm sculpting.. I'm fairly new to polymer clay and I've only made two things before. I was told by a friend that you could do a project piece by piece, basically only baking one section at a time [letting the section you've previously baked cool thoroughly before adding on]. This would be useful if you're making something that has different parts at a variety of thicknesses as the amount of time you bake the clay depends on it's thickness. I imagine this process would take damn near forever so I took a risk and just made the head in full with all parts attached, then I only baked it once. Everything turned out perfectly! I was especially worried about the teeth as they are tiny and thin and the head was a good 12mm thick. With Sculpey you bake 15 min at 275 degrees [Fahrenheit] for every 6mm, so I threw it in for 30 minutes.
Right now I'm waiting for it to cool so I can glaze it. I'll be using the Sculpey brand glaze, there's others you can use to get the same effect that are cheaper but since I was just starting out I didn't want to take a chance on ruining my project during the final step.
I also used the Sculpey clay softener for the first time. It was EXTREMELY helpful, especially since there were a couple colours I had to create by mixing 2 different clays together. You can do this without the softener but it takes a ton of kneading and patience. The clay softener can also be used to eliminate fingerprint marks from your project and I was told that rubbing alcohol will do the same thing. I didn't try that but after using the softener I'm having a hard time seeing how the rubbing alcohol would work the same way. Rubbing alcohol tends to evaporate pretty quickly and I would imagine it would disappear from the surface of the clay too fast for you to rub the prints away. The Sculpey softener is a but thicker and feels slippery to the touch, it remains on the surface of the clay long enough for you to achieve a nice, smooth surface. I totally recommend picking some of the softener up, especially if you're just starting out.. makes your job a lot easier.
I'll give that rubbing alcohol thing a shot and let you know how it goes.
Alright, I'm pretty sure the head is cooled down enough now so I'm off to glaze!
Happy Crafting~
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