How to Bake Polymer Clay so that Your Whites Stay White

Cindy, it's been a while since I've visited so thought I'd better add you to google reader.
These are fabulous tips…got one more for ya…avoid dark colored clothing, particularly wool…if they molt strands end up all through your white clay no matter how careful you are.
One more tip…avoid white! LOL

xMel

hehehehe Yeah… Avoiding white would be one way to solve the problem!! Though, have you ever seen those beads Dan Cormier made in his White Series? They are so gorgeous, they make you think it is possible to only buy one color of clay, white!

Thanks for sharing the sweater tip. I once was inspired to make a set of beads with little snips of thread in them, all because of some translucent clay I got some angora sweater fluff in!

Cindy Lietz's last blog post..The Polymer Clay Dremel Tool Makes Buffing Beads Fun

Dear Cindy,

Thanks for the tips (I can sure use them)!

Here is a little lesson I learned the hard way…

Last night I was using white clay to make a pendant. I noticed some tiny specks of color on the white as I worked. I then realized that the stamp that I had used to make an impression on the white clay had not been cleaned the last time I used it, and some of the blue color from the stamp had transfered onto my white clay.

I quickly learned that I need to be sure all of my tools are diligently cleaned before I begin a new project!

Thanks again :)

Cindy Erickson

That is great advice Cindy!

Thank you for posting it! There are times when ink on your stamp is a good thing. If you pre-ink yuor rubberstamp before pressing into your clay it will leave an ink image in the impressed areas. It will also help to relelease the stamp from the clay.

Of course this is only good if you do it right because if you have to smush it up and try again, the ink will get mixed into the clay. Which in that case you get a new color of clay, which isn't always a bad thing!

Cindy Lietz's last post..Bead Making Conspiracy – Polymer Clay Tutor's Evil Plan Exposed

Cindy – I noticed some of your recipes include Premo and Fimo and I believe Fimo is cured at a lower temp. Is it a problem to cure the mixture at 275 degrees?

Lots of artists have been mixing the brands for a long time. I like to bake Premo and Fimo at 265 degrees for an hour. So I have never had a problem mixing them. A ten degree fluctuation isn't that much of a difference anyway. Just cure at the lowest temp of the two clays and you will be fine.

Hi, I am new to Polymer Clay and have a few questions. I am sure you have answered them somewhere but I cant find it so here goes…

Does the Polymer Clay piece have to be completely dry before baking (like PMC)?

Do I introduce the piece in the toaster oven when the oven is cold, wait till it gets to 275 degrees and THEN count the 20 minutes? Or should the piece be introduced with the oven pre-heated at 275???

I know these are very basic questions but I don't like the texture of the pieces that I have cooked and I am wondering if I am doing it right.

Thank you for a wonderful page and all your information, Marina

Hi Marina, Great questions!

No, polymer clay is not a water based clay that need to dry out before baking like PMC (Precious Metal Clay or Art Clay Silver). You just make your polymer clay piece and bake it, without any drying time.

As far as putting clay in a cold oven or a pre-heated oven, that depends on who you talk to. Usually preheated prevents that big temp spike that happens when the oven is trying to get up to temperature. So I prefer pre-heated.

I bake all my pieces, regardless of size for 1 hour or more. This ensures proper curing and a nice hard bead. As far as the texture of the clay when baked, that depends on the brand of clay. Each brand feels a little different when baked,, so that will be a preference thing.

Click the link by my name for more info on baking and type the word 'brands' into the search box at the top of the page for more info on the different brands of polymer clay. There are also links at the top of the page for course information and video library details.

If you need more help, ask.

Cindy, I bought the oven thermometer, got it just right, put in my beads. One hour later when I checked 80% were fine but 20% had turned dark, all in the back L corner of the oven. Then I realized they were Kato clay. I think that bakes at a lower temp. The rest were mixed clay and they were fine. So I shall try the bleach trick. Marlowe

Check your electric set up, and if it meets the right code, purchase a couple of rheostats. These devices monitor the amount of energy being passed to the powered object, and can assist in turning down temps to a "non-baking" level for use with polymer clay.

I dragged mine out from the "stained glass" box and use it on a heating pad (covered with a small folded tea towel), so that I can keep the temp low, without spikes.

The nite before, I pull out the clay and canes I want to work with, and by the time I get up, everything is the perfect temperature and consistency, and ready to roll.

@Marlowe: Kato clay likes the higher temps. In fact it does really well at 300F degrees. I'm thinking that it may be that the back of your oven is hotter. Make sure you are baking on a ceramic tile, which will help even out the overall oven temp. Also baking in a bed of cornstarch and tenting your beads will protect them quite a bit from scorching. Click the link by my name for more info. Type the word 'baking' into the search box at the top of the page for even more info.

@Jocelyn: That is an interesting idea you brought up. Could work for warming up old canes quite nicely. Thanks for sharing that!

re: cleaning your oven

Do you recommend cleaning a dedicated toaster oven every once in a while?

Yes!

Hi Cindy!

I'm a new subscriber and loving the back issues. So much so that my credit card company called to verify my card hadn't been stolen because I had so many charges to you!

I'm a research junkie, and I researchered the clay subject extensively– I like to have as much info as possible.

My question is this: Have you tried boiling clay (stovetop or microwave) instead of baking it? I've read that white clay stays very white if cured by that method.

Thanks!

Becky in FL

Hi Becky! What a sweetheart, welcome! (Cute story. The credit card company was probably thinking, "What the heck is polymer clay anyways? And why would one lady want all these videos?" Little do they know how cool polymer clay is!) :-)

In regards to your question on boiling, yes I've tried it and it does keep the beads quite white. The problem is that water boils at 212F (100C) and the clay cures at 230F-275F (110C-135C). Although the clay appears to be cured when boiled, I feel it hasn't cured properly and has the potential for becoming brittle over time.

What some people like to do is to boil first than bake further. I find it more of a hassle than what it is worth unless you are making a huge amount of beads at once and you want pile them up in the oven.

Baking on a bead rack and tenting it with paper will also help your beads from discoloring.

Baking in cornstarch is another option and will keep your clay white as well. You should have a video on that, but you can click the link by my name for more info. Just remember to only put your beads in the cornstarch, right before baking or the cornstarch will leach away some of the plasticizer and possibly cause breakage.

As far as more topics to research, this blog is jammed packed. If you click on the HOME link at the top of the page and scroll down, you will see there are hundreds of great articles for you to read and absorb.

Also, feel free to ask any questions you like at any of the posts. I am here to help!

Although I know that Premo is better for beads, I thought it would be a good idea to use up my Sculpey III while I practice techniques that are new to me.

I made a 4-color jellyroll cane from Sculpey III, then cut slices to put into the measuring tool for my tri-roller. I didn't care if the cane got distorted as I sliced it because I was mushing the slices together for rolling. The beads came out great and the colors were beautiful and vivid. I was attempting to duplicating the colors that I saw in a friend's fleece jacket.

I baked the beads in my brand-new bead-baking rack with a piece of parchment paper tented over them. I baked for about an hour with my oven thermometer fluctuating from 250 to 285. I thought that the clay wouldn't burn unless the oven went over 300.

Anyway, the beads that came out of the oven were barely recognizable. They had darkened so much that they look like multiple shades of gray instead of turquoise, blue-violet, violet, and blue-green. I sanded the living daylights out of them, but they were too deeply scorched.

So, do I need to bake at a lower temperature? I mixed each of my colors with silver. Do the mica colors burn more easily? Does Sculpey III burn more easily than Premo?

I know that I can bake my beads totally covered it cornstarch, but I'd prefer to use the baking rack now that I've purchased it.

Sorry to hear that Linda. :-( You could have a combination of a few problems. First of all, your oven most likely spiked higher than you think. It takes time for thermometers to catch up and the constant cooling down and heating up often gets missed. Next there could be a problem with the thermometer itself. Many of them are inaccurate. And lastly, Sculpey III tends to scorch easily.

What I would do is bring the temp down a little and test that with just a couple of beads. See if that helps. You may need to bury the Sculpey III beads in cornstarch if you still run into problems.

Also, before throwing out those scorched beads, you could try tossing them into some bleach to see if that helps. The link by my name will take you to an article about that.

If they still won't improve, you can always cover them with new clay and re-bake, or chop them up for faux stones. Clay, good or bad should never be wasted. There is always something fun that can be done with it!

Thanks so much for that feedback, Cindy. My toaster oven is very difficult to regulate and I wasn't watching it carefully that day, so there is a good possiblity that it spiked higher than I thought it had. I'll keep a close eye on the temps next time I bake.

I don't have much Sculpey III left and I don't have plans to buy any more of it. I really don't like working with it anyway, so I guess I'll use the Premo from now on, even when I experiment.

I promise not to throw the beads away! I'm the only one who will know they changed color. I looked at them again today and they're not that bad looking, they just don't have the vivid colors I was looking for. I'll see what happens if I soak them in bleach overnight. Even if they brighten up a little I think it will please me.

@ Cindy: I soaked the scorched beads in bleach and I think they lightened up a bit, but of course the vivid colors didn't come back. Instead of Turquoise, Violet, Blue-Violet, and Blue-Green, they ended up with kind of a stormy ocean look. The colors are Blue-Grey, Eggplant, and Greenish-Blue-Grey now.

I sanded with an electric toothbrushfrom 320 up to 2000 grits, then buffed them with my Dremel, but they still seemed too dull. So I put some Future on them and that geve them more depth. They remind me of polished slate. Then I strung them with some seed beads and crystals into a necklace that looks nice against lavender and pastel blue-green.

I had one lentil bead from that same jellyroll cane that I hadn't baked yet. As you told me, baking it buried in cornstarch made a huge difference. So from now on, that's what I'll be doing.

If I didn't have you and this group, there's a good chance that I would have given up on clay after burning those beads. Thanks!

That's great Linda!