Making Doll Food Polymer Clay 101 pt 14

Watch the video here.

I know I gave a very brief discussion about baking surfaces in an early video in this series but I thing it is important enough to discuss it in more detail.

I have included photos of the bottom surface of the pieces of clay I baked on each baking surface. I know some are difficult to see, hopefully you can see the differences. 

If you are a regular viewer of my channel you may have already noticed that most of the time I bake my clay projects on paper plates. Yes, it is perfectly safe. The burning temperature for the clay is much lower than the burning temperature for the paper. In my opinion there are several advantages to using paper plates to bake on. Fist they are cheap, only use the really cheap kind that is plain white and has no coating. Secondly the paper plate doesn't really leave any kind of marking on the bottom side of your clay. The top and the bottom of flat pieces of clay look pretty much the same texture wise.

One of the things I do a lot is test bake clay mixtures. Whenever I am working on a new project I mix my clay and then bake small pieces to see if I have the mixture the way I want it. With the paper plate I can make the notes about the mixtures I have tried right on the plate next to that piece of clay.

If you are working with a group of people doing clay projects you can write each person's name right on the paper plate that contains their project. Makes keeping everything straight much easier.

Another surface I use often is a ceramic tile. Just one from the home improvement store. I like to stick to the 6” by 6” ones for baking and reserve the bigger size to work on. The major problem with tiles is that they leave the bottom of the clay project very shiny. This can be a distraction on many projects. The only time I always use a tile is if I am using liquid clay, then the tile is a must so you can cleanly remove the project from the baking surface.

The other surface I use regularly is sand paper. I love how it makes the bottom side of the clay look like a real baked good. I especially like this when making doll cookies.

Now these are not the only surfaces I use, these are just the top 3. In many projects I will specify what I suggest you bake on, and I usually choose the surface based on what texture will look best with the finished item.