How to make products from polymer clay: instructions and photos

2024 Author: Sierra Becker | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-26 03:46

Did you sculpt from plasticine as a child? If yes, then you will definitely succeed in polymer clay products. This is a fairly plastic material that allows you to create a wide variety of crafts. Some of them do not require special knowledge and skills. It just takes a little creativity.

We will reveal some techniques for working with this material and tell you how to create polymer clay products at home without much difficulty.

A few words about the material

Polymer clay is an artificial material that has similar properties to plasticine or ordinary clay. It is quite plastic, it warms up well, rolls out and stretches.

One more of its very important property is hardening at high temperatures. Depending on the manufacturer, this indicator ranges from 100-120 ° C above zero. To do this, craftswomen use ordinary ovens or cook finished products made of polymer clay, created with their own hands, on the stove in a pot of water.

After cooling, such craftsacquire the properties of plastic. They are solid, do not crumble, almost do not bend. Thin parts can break because they are not durable.

Polymer clay comes in different colors, which gives a wide field for creativity. In addition, the two shades blend perfectly with each other, leaving no streaks or streaks, unless you need it. Therefore, you can always play not only with shapes, but also with a combination of colors, their smooth transition or clear contrast.

How to bake polymer clay items

This issue should be given special attention, since failure to comply with some of the nuances can "kill" your craft almost at the final stage of its manufacture.

Firstly, the manufacturer writes his recommendations on the optimal temperature on each package. They must be strictly observed. This will allow you to get a durable and bright product at the output. If the temperature is lower, the craft may crumble or not harden at all. At higher rates, polymer clay starts to burn. Brown spots appear on the surface, it smokes with poisonous gas, and the colors lose their brightness. After cooling, such a product will easily break and crumble.

Secondly, even under temperature conditions, polymer clay emits toxic gases. Therefore, the room with the oven should be well ventilated, and the household appliance for cooking can only be used after it has been thoroughly cleaned.

In order not to wash the oven every time, craftswomen came up with the idea of processing products in tightly closedbaking sleeves. So the gases remain inside this simple device and do not settle on the walls of the oven.

Some types of plastic (the second name of the material) can be "cooked". To do this, boil water in a separate pan, put the products in it and boil them for several minutes. Time depends on the thickness of the craft. If you do not finish cooking, then a soft core will remain inside, which will begin to crumble. And if overcooked, the product made of polymer clay may burst even in water.

Naturally, after such procedures, the saucepan must be thoroughly washed before cooking food in it, and even better - allocate special dishes for this purpose.

Required Materials

To start sculpting from clay, you need to prepare at least a minimum set of tools and materials. Professional masters have many more of them, and they have their own specifics, but in order to try working with plastic, most of what you already have at home will do.

So, we need:

• polymer clay itself in one or more colors;
• rolling pin (bottle of deodorant or medicine);
• stationery knife;
• one ceramic tile or plastic plank;
• set of plasticine stacks;
• toothpicks;
• foil;
• pencils (shadows, acrylics, simple pastels);
• cookie molds;
• brushes.

This set is enough to make simple polymer clay crafts. For beginner craftswomen, it makes no sense to buy expensiveequipment and tools. This is the lot of professionals. Under each specific master class, we will give detailed recommendations on what else you can use in a particular case.

The easiest modeling

There are quite a few techniques and methods for working with plastic. All of them with their nuances will not fit in one article. To do this, you need to publish a special multi-volume book. Here we will consider simple products made of polymer clay, step by step we will analyze the stages of their manufacture.

Let's start with the simplest - the usual modeling. We knead a piece of polymer clay well in our hands and begin to sculpt simple figures. It can be fruits, vegetables, household items. The photo above shows the simplest master class for making wing pendants. To do this, you need to roll out several sausages of different lengths of the same thickness and blind them together.

At the final stage, put the longest sausage on top of the workpiece in a spiral and lower its end down. This is an excellent base for earrings or pendants, necklaces and bracelets. So that you can hang them later, we insert a jewelry pin with an eye inside. You can buy them at any craft store. But there is a small caveat: after baking, they can freely fall out of the holes. To eliminate this drawback, when the workpieces have cooled down, glue the pins with ordinary superglue.

Now we can bake our workpiece. So just in a few minutes you will create original earrings for yourself. Hooks for them (earrings) are sold in the same stores.

Original buttons

Do you have any clothes that lack beautiful buttons? Make them out of polymer clay. It's just elementary.

Knead the plastic and roll it out on the board in an even layer, cut out circles or squares of the required size from it and pierce holes with a toothpick. Everything, the buttons are almost ready. It remains only to bake them. But you can make even more original products from polymer clay.

For this you will need a texture sheet. It will perfectly replace a piece of embossed wallpaper or any other surface. When you rolled out the plastic, put a relief sheet on top of it with a texture to it and roll it well. Carefully peel off and you will see a clear imprint of the design on the surface of the polymer clay. From this cut blanks for buttons.

If you want to decorate the product even more, take a shadow or a crumb of pastel and walk along the surface of the product with your finger. This will more clearly highlight the relief pattern. After baking, it is better to cover such buttons with acrylic varnish so that the pigment does not crumble over time.

Texture embellishments

Creating texture jewelry is one of the trends in the modern world of plastic jewelry. The photo above shows that they are not difficult to create, but they look amazing. Find everything in your home that has a relief, reprint it on the surface of polymer clay and combine several textures in one product.

Making products from polymer clay in this way will significantly diversify yourjewelry box, will help you create jewelry for specific outfits and eliminate the problems with choosing gifts for girlfriends.

This direction is so popular among needlewomen that there are even craftsmen who create designer silicone texture mats, which they then sell to other needlewomen.

Sculpting miniatures

Each craftswoman has her own favorite technique for working with plastic. Miniatures are one of them. This is the creation of exact reduced copies of everything that can be found in everyday life. From these miniatures you can make jewelry, paintings, jewelry, toys for children. We will consider an example of how to make a fridge magnet in the form of a cupcake. It can easily become both a pendant and a brooch.

A detailed master class is presented in the photo above. First of all, you need to make the cake itself. To do this, we give the brown piece of plastic the appropriate shape with a toothpick and a toothbrush.

Next, we make pink cream from the sausage, which we also work with a toothpick. After that, turn on the fantasy and make a variety of fruits, with which we will then decorate our "cream". When everything is ready, bake the workpiece.

This simple polymer clay workshop will help you decorate your own refrigerator with original magnets, and you will always have original gifts at hand if there is no time left to buy something serious.

Flower earrings and bracelets

Flowers in jewelry never go out of style. So why not create original DIY jewelry to match your favorite dress?

To work, we need pink (or your favorite) and black plastic, beads (can also be made of plastic), jewelry pins with round heads, rings and earrings.

Let's start with making leaves. On the board, roll out small pieces of plastic in the shape of a cone and flatten them with your fingers. Next, draw the veins with a toothpick.

Flowers are a bit more difficult to make, but not so much that beginners can't handle it. This product made of polymer clay consists of several thin pink cakes. To make buds out of them, we take the handle of the brush and dip it into the water. So the workpiece is better then removed from it. Glue the cakes to the wet end of the brush and form flowers from them. When the product was removed from the handle, we make a hole in the center for a pin.

Roses are also made from the same cakes, but a little differently. We lay them out in a row with a slight overlap on each other. Therefore, this "caterpillar" must be rolled up. We form a bud from a more beautiful edge, and cut off the opposite edge with a clerical knife. Making a hole for a pin.

When the flowers and leaves have already baked and cooled down, you can start assembling the decoration. Its basis is a chain of jewelry rings, on which all elements are hung on pins with wire cutters and thin-nosed pliers.

Filigree

This is another simple but rather elegant technique. It is not suitable for those who do not like or do not know how to work with fine details. Such products made of polymer clay, laid out with their own hands, will surprise many.

The essence of the technique lies in the fact that it is necessary to lay out small elements on the basis, while creating some kind of picture. The photo above shows a floral ornament. In fact, there is no limit to the imagination in creating your own stories.

So, for work you will need a plastic base and small pieces of multi-colored polymer clay. The tool is a toothpick or a needle. It depends on the size of the elements you are going to work with.

When the background is prepared, you can make an approximate markup of what you will post on it. Then we take a small piece of plastic and give it the desired shape: a ball, a cone, an oval, a sausage. We carefully pry this element with a needle and transfer it to the right place, slightly pressing it into the background. The dent that will remain on it will depend on the direction of the needle. Therefore, be careful to turn this "flaw" into a decorative effect.

Animal figurines

As a child, you definitely sculpted cats and dogs from plasticine. You can create such a product from polymer clay with your own hands today. In the photo above there is a detailed master class on how to make a Yorkshire Terrier figurine. We will not analyze it in more detail, because all the stages of work are presented here.

But some nuances should be mentioned. It is not necessary to make a large figure completely out of plastic. This material is expensive, and such a product will be baked for a long time. What is the way out of the situation?Plain food grade aluminum foil. From it, too, you can "sculpt". Tear off a large piece of foil and roll it tightly into the desired shape. When the base is ready, cover it with a layer of plastic, which will hide your trick.

Further, all work is done as if you made the body from a single piece of polymer clay. These products outwardly do not differ from others, as well as working with them.

And the second trick. In order for the workpiece to bake well, if it has an impressive thickness, send it to the oven for a short time before each stage. This way the inner layers will harden at the same time as the outer layers in the final baking.

What can be done with plastic?

We figured out how novice craftsmen create polymer clay products with their own hands. But it is not entirely clear what they are for and what their practical application is?

This material is so versatile and has so many decorative possibilities that it can be used in various industries. Polymer clay is used to make jewelry and accessories for clothes, decorate dishes, sculpt paintings and interior figurines, and create toys for children.

The main thing to remember is that this material is relatively durable. Therefore, it makes no sense to create objects from it that will have some load. They will not withstand it and will quickly become unusable.

Polymer clay elements are perfectly combined with other materials. All this is due to the fact that with the help of plastics it is possible to imitate the structure of wood, fabric, ceramic clay, leather. All this allows you to make thosedetails that can never be created from other materials. That's why polymer clay has quickly taken its place in the world of arts and crafts.

Sculpting as a business

Having tried once, many masters cannot leave their practice with plastic surgery. It is expensive to constantly buy this consumable, but the level of their skill allows you to put up finished products for sale. For some, this is a way to recoup the cost of their creativity, and for some, polymer clay is the main source of income. Products of masters with a worldwide reputation can cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars. And this is not surprising, because they offer an exclusive product created in a unique author's style, often in a single copy.

Therefore, if you liked this activity, feel free to hone your skills, look for what you do best and express your personality as an author.

You ask: where to sell polymer clay products? The "Crafts Fair" and many resources for needlewomen are excellent platforms to make yourself known. You can also post your masterpieces on free bulletin boards, create thematic groups or pages on social networks, suggest to friends, arrange with some store to take them for sale. Plenty of options! But it is worth remembering that the competition in this market is huge. And in order to stand out from the mass of other needlewomen, you need to offer high-quality original goods at the right price.

Don't be afraid anywayto create and create your masterpieces, even if they are only for you. In creativity, the main thing is to enjoy the process and the result.