You said your clay is rubbery. It could be under-cooked, or it could just be really thin (very thin clay pieces can remain flexible after baking.) But if your clay is thicker, it should be quite hard after it’s completely cured. Chances are, it just needs to bake longer. Try baking for an hour at the correct temp, checked with a thermometer, until your clay is hard like it’s supposed to be. If you continue to have problems, of course, please leave another comment/question.

As far as the changes in color, you can try to protect your clay to keep this from happening. However some clays, including Sculpey III, can fade a bit sometimes. There are some things you can try, though. One of them is in this article, Burying Your Beads in Cornstarch.

I left the last comment on that article’s page for someone asking about baking info. It provides more details about burying your pieces in cornstarch, and other baking tips like tenting beads, which also help with color change. There’s more baking information and links to some of Cindy’s other articles, with great tips that help stabilize the oven temp, which then helps with the color problem and other things. It also has instructions on how to use the search box to find more info on this website.

I found an older article, How to Bake Sculpey Polymer Clay in a Toaster Oven.

It has some good toaster oven info, and explains temperature spikes, how to test for hot spots, etc. It goes over some of the other ideas I mentioned for shielding the clay from color change. Tenting your beads is one of them. Be sure to read the comments under the article, as well. Cindy’s first comment explains what can happen if your clay isn’t completely cured.

I’ve had trouble sleeping — need to try to sleep now. I hope this helped you some. Try reading the articles and comments, and see if that solves your problem. Please leave another question if you still have trouble, or if something else comes up. Best of luck, and have a great day!

I am at my wits end. I am baking Sculpey polymer clay and it comes out like a piece of rubber. I have tried temps from 130 to 285 for 20 min to 30 min…no change. If I bake the piece more than once I lose the color. I am using a Black and Decker Toaster oven, brand new, Calrod technology heat lights, no infrared.

Thanks for any help you can provide me.
Robert

I defer to Cindy of course for her expert tutorials and only wish to share some of my trial and error ideas.

Walmart, and Micheals sell these smaller plastic baggies that Cindy was talking about. The baggies come in 4 sizes I believe now. One of the middle ones is perfect to fit the small blocks of clay into. I put my clay in those baggies, new or ramnants alike. I label my baggies with a sharpie and sometimes staple a small peice of paper to them with the clay information.

I then found some small baskets at most of the dollar stores, and Walmart carries them They are about 8 inches long by just a little over 2 inches wide. They stack easily and they hold the little baggies just right. I stack those in a medium size sterlite container. I pack them in by color so when I am looking for items for a project I can quickly find what I need. They also have larger baskets. These run about 3 for a dollar.

Also, color strips…..If any of you live near a Menards store this is a great bargain! They have several sections in their paint departments that have color boards, and booklets with every color and combination of color that you could dream of.

I picked up some of them that are even sorted by groupings. Lake…Relaxation, Ocean, neutral.etc.etc.

These are of course free and small enough squares of color that you could cut them out if you wanted to.

Okay, I think I have used way more of my chat space lol…