Making Doll Food Polymer Clay 101 pt 10

Watch the video here.

This week on our Clay 101 series we are talking about a tool I use every time I work with polymer clay, my pasta machine. I am so glad I decided to bite the bullet so to speak and use this pasta machine for clay.

A bit of a back story about how I came to get this pasta machine. Anyone that knows me in real life knows I love to cook, it is one of my passions and years ago back when I was a new bride my mother-in-law gifted me with a top of the line pasta machine. I had seen this machine in a kitchen store that used to be local to us and my thought was “who would pay that much for a pasta machine” Then I found myself opening it up for my birthday. I thanked her profusely and I did attempt to make pasta with it. One time. That was more than enough times to make it really clear to me that I was never going to be making fresh pasta. At least not with that pasta machine. I have better things to do with my time. I would rather make the sauce and buy the pasta.

Anyway, the pasta machine sat at the back of my kitchen cabinet for years, over a decade close to two decades. I would pull the box out occasionally, wonder what I should do with it. I felt guilty that it just sat there but I really could never convince myself to make pasta again. I even moved it to a new house and it took up residence in the back of a new cabinet. I really felt bad but....

Then I started working with polymer clay. I read some articles where people were using pasta machines to roll out their clay. That made me think... should I? I wanted to but I again felt guilty. I knew that once I put a piece of clay through the machine I couldn't use it for pasta again. I debated for a couple of years and then one day I just boldly took that pasta machine out of the cabinet, un-boxed it and clamped it to my table. I then found a lump of clay that really needed some rolling out and I never looked back. The only regret I had was that I hadn't done this years before.

My pasta machine and I have spent hours together, it is always clamped to my work table and I use it every time I work with clay.

Then there is that second pasta machine, the one that was marketed for clay. I was at a store closing sale one time and they had this one machine left and it was marked down to less than $5! I felt like I couldn't pass that deal up.

My thought process was that I would be able to use the cheap machine for dark color clay and the good one for the lighter colors. The problem is that having 2 pasta machines on my table just took up way too much table space.

Maybe some day I will figure out how to use both machines and still have work space. In the meantime it doesn't take up too much space in the storage room and I can always dig it out if I need it.

Making Doll Food Polymer Clay 101 pt 9

Watch the video here.

This week as we continue our discussion of working with polymer clay to make our doll foods I wanted to go a bit more in-depth on how to color your liquid polymer clay. I am working with the same 2 brands I showed you last week in our introduction to liquid clays.

The two easiest ways to color this product in my opinion is to use either chalk or tube oil paint.

For using chalk just scrape off a bit of the chalk from the stick just like if you were going to use it to color your clay. Then mix it into the liquid clay with something like a toothpick. This will give a slightly cloudy color and you can often see the granules of the chalk. This can be a good or bad thing depending on what you are making. For some applications it is just what you do want.

To use tube oil paint just start with the smallest amount you can and just use the amount it takes to color the product. You don't want too much, a little goes a very long way. The paint gives a richer more solid color and is the baked liquid clay retains more of its translucency.

I do want to take a moment to say I know there are a lot of tutorials out there where acrylic paint is used to color liquid polymer clay. This is something the manufacturers do not recommend. Acrylic paint is water based and it can cause big problems when you bake the clay. I have heard of instances where items exploded when those water vapors expanded in the oven. So please stay away from the acrylic paint. The oil paints I use are the cheapest ones from the craft store so the investment in them was less than $5.

The last thing I covered in this video was how to mix the liquid clay with a dry crumbly clay to revive it. As you saw it is really easy to do. This is also the same way you make frosting (or other spreadable food items) from polymer clay.

Lastly I hope the difference in the surface shine was apparent on the video. There is a world of difference in how these two brands look when baked. That is one of the reasons I keep both brands on hand.

Making Doll Food Polymer Clay 101 pt8

Watch the video here.

This week I decided to just talk a few minutes about liquid polymer clay. I know we will need to get more in depth later but for now I just wanted to give you a quick overview.

I am sorry this is so short but time was an issue this week. Darn real life kept getting in my way of making doll stuff. Don't you hate it when that happens?

Anyway, this week we are talking about the two liquid polymer clays I use the most. The first (and easiest to get my hands on) is Translucent Liquid Scupley. You should be able to be able to get it almost anywhere you can buy polymer clay.

The second one is Liquid Kato clay and for me that is something I have to get when I am on vacation since the only store I have ever found it in was Hobby Lobby (and we don't have those here)

Both of these products are very useful and I if possible I would say try to get both. If you are only going to get one (or just to start) I would probably say start with the Sculpey product.

In future weeks I will go over working with the liquid clays in more detail. 

Making Doll Food Polymer Clay 101 pt 7

Watch the video here.

This week we are building on the skill we talked about last week. If you remember last week we talked about easy ways to make sure you were getting consistent results when you rolled out your polymer clay. This week we are taking that a step further and talking about making consistent portions of clay.

When might you need to use this skill might be the first question to come to your mind. The answer is anytime you want to make multiple items that are the same size. Things like batches of cookies, berries, and so many more that I can't list them.

The secret is to roll the clay out to a consistent thickness and use a cutter (any shape) to cut pieces. If your clay is a consistent thickness and you use the same cutter to cut it all the pieces will be the same size. They will have the same amount of clay. If you find that your portions of clay are the wrong size for your project it is easy to adjust. You can either make the clay thinner (or thicker) and/or use a different cutter to cut it.