Polymer Clay - Uses and Techniques

Uses and Techniques

Polymer clay can be used in many ways, a number of which have been generalized from other art or craft techniques. Uses for polymer clay include:

• Sculpting. Hand-shaped items can be any size from "miniatures" to quite large. Bas relief can also be created; clay clothing and accessories can be made for sculpted figures.

• Creating beads and jewelry of all kinds, such as pendants, earrings, barrettes, and buttons.

• Covering items made from materials such as glass, metal, cardboard, terra cotta, and some plastics. Popular items for covering include pens, eggshells, votive candle-holders, and switch-plates. Larger items, such as tables, can also be veneered.

• Creating vessels large and small. Jars, boxes, bowls, and container pendants can be created freestanding, or over permanent or removable armatures.

• Creating simulations or fauxs of many natural and fabricated materials such as jade, turquoise, marble, granite, metal, ivory, wood, leather, stained glass, mosaic, and cloisonne.

• Onlaying clay with other materials to create collages.

• Creating paintings with polymer pastes, and bas reliefs.

• Creating practical utility items, such as frames, games and game pieces, dioramas, toys, mini-books, notebook covers, greeting cards, and postcards.

Techniques for working with polymer clay include:

• Gradient (Skinner) blending of two or more colors using sheets of clay and a pasta machine or rolling pin.

• Forming "canes," which are logs of clay with patterns running through their entire length, from which identical slices can be cut and used in various ways. The patterns created in canes can be simple, complex, or anything in between; they may be pictorial or simply geometric. Canes (and therefore their images) can be "reduced" so that they become quite small, and then combined to make multiple images (millefiori).

• Impressing textures, lines or images into raw clay with rubber stamps, texture sheets, sandpaper, needle tools, or other items.

• Molding: pressing raw clay into molds to create casts and to duplicate textures, shapes, etc. Molds made from metal, glass, rubber, and silicone can be purchased, or custom molds can be made from polymer clay or dedicated molding compounds.

• Extruding clay through shaped die plates to create strands or ropes of uniform size and cross-section.

• "Mokume-gane": thin slices shaved from distorted stacks of layered clays, powders, and inks and applied to surfaces.

• Using clay to accept "transfers" of images from photographs, drawings, computer-created images or text using a solvent or transfer paper. Images can also be transferred onto freestanding liquid clay films or decals.

• Carving or drilling after the clay has been cured (and backfilled or inlaid, if desired).

• Inlaying cured or uncured clay tiles or chips to create mosaics.

• Multimedia: combining clay with wire, paper, beads, charms, stamps, fabric, etc.