My Polymer Clay Essentials

I have five very essential tools that I like using when I am working with polymer clay. They are versatile and inexpensive! I'll tell you what I use them for and how they are effective so that you can get more ideas!

1) Paper Towels: This certainly seems like common sense, but it really is a useful tool. I use mostly for wiping down my table and cleaning my brushes. To conserve it, I always break the towels in smaller pieces. Another use is if you're painting clay with acrylic paint and made a mistake, you can simply add water to the paper towel and wipe it off! One more trick is if you're trying to paint a whole piece of clay (works better with round or cube shaped clays) with one color, add a few drops of acrylic paint onto the paper towel, fold it in half to spread the color, and put your piece inside. Move the clay around so it will absorb the color from the towel. In that way, the paint will get on pretty quick!

2) Rubbing Alcohol: This is my most favorite cleaner ever! There are always other cleaners like baby wipes and hand sanitizers, but rubbing alcohol can take out any tough stain and leave my work place spotless (clay friendly surfaces). It works on resin, paints, glues, excess clay, etc.! It does an okay job with cleaning your hands. Alcohol also helps remove unwanted paint, dust and dirt on uncured clay, but it also removes some of its pigment so be careful.

3) Aluminum Foil: This has so many uses and it's so affordable! You can use it for curing the clay in the oven so it won't get burned. It is also good for storing uncured clay if you want to keep your clays separate. Because of its bendable attributes and rugged surface, it's good to use for texturing. It is also good for making armatures of course! 

4) Vegetable Oil: Practically any oil can work, but vegetable oil is cheapest and sells in gallons! :) Instead of using Sculpey's clay softener or TLS, oil works just as fine. To make fake icing, you can add oil to dry clay then mix it with TLS. Don't put too much oil though or the clay will get very loose. Since I work with miniatures, I use 1 drop. I store oil in a plastic shot cup like in the picture. 

5) Box Cutters/Razor blades: Every polymer clay artist needs this unless you're a child. It is perfect for slicing even pieces of clay and it has high precision such as shaving off the clay slightly to remove its unwanted colors. Not only do I use it for that, but I also use it to remove stains on my work surface by simply scraping it. As you can see in the photo, I have a ton of them! Yet, I've only used three of them haha.

Bonus: Tweezers! They are so perfect for removing the tiniest dust particles that got stuck into the clay without ruining your piece. I sometimes use them for making bottle charms to add the contents inside.

So these are the useful tools that I have when working with polymer clay! I hoped my tips will help with your creations! :)

❤Nicole Vong