The reason I like the commercial bead rack is it fits nicely in my toaster oven and comes with a bunch of bead piercing pins. It also comes with a piece of acrylic that works wonderfully for rolling logs of clay or lentil beads. I find it quite handy, if you don’t want to hunt down other bead baking alternatives.

As far as using the slicer feature, I find that to be pretty useless and just prefer to slice my canes without it.

Have a great vacation! Take lots of inspiring pictures!

As far as a great baking surface, you can usually pick up glazed ceramic tiles at flooring places or even Big Box stores like Home Depot. Just make sure that they are smooth with no textures on them and that they will fit nicely into your oven. The 6″ x 8″ tiles fit perfectly in my toaster oven.

Having a couple extra tiles will come in handy. I put one on the floor of my oven under the element, which helps stabilize the heat so there is less spiking of temperature. Not every oven has room for that though.

You can use the tiles to work on as well as bake on, if you like. Plus you can use two tiles (smooth sides in) to ‘sandwich’ flat polymer clay pendants and things to keep them flat while baking. Click the link by my name for more info on that.

Sometimes if you ask sweetly, the guys in the tile department will even give you a couple tile for free. Doesn’t always work as well, if a woman is running the department though. *wink*

Have fun and enjoy your polymer clay journey!

Doug, thank you so much for all your help on Saturday. I have been collecting Polymer Clay Jewelry supplies for years, so I have much of what I need already. I spent Sunday picking up some odds and ends. But I am having trouble finding a basic item. Where do I get the ceramic baking piece. Is that made special for Polymer clay or can I go to my local flooring store and buy a piece of ceramic?

My facebook account is dulcetesoros, I have pictures there of my masks. Anyone is more than welcomed to add me as a friend.

I must say, this change in altitude is not easy to adjust to but I love it and I will get a handle on baking my creations. It’s just a matter of lots of practice.

Thank you again Kat, for taking the time to answer me…
Happy Claying!
Blanca

Here’s a quick summary of the directions, in case someone else has a question about baking clay at high altitudes. They seem to have come from a variety of sources. To summarize: when curing at high altitudes (3500 – 5000′) bake at least 5 deg. hotter & leave in longer…that’s for all clays. At altitudes over 5000′, bake Premo at 300F (recommended by a Polyform chemist,) 30 min for ea. 1/4″ thickness. Always use an oven thermometer to monitor the temperature — especially at these high temp’s! For translucent clays, turn the temperature down…under 300F (they can darken easily.)

Most of the clay was still in it’s original package and my scraps on glad wrap and then stored in a plastic ziplock bag.

I wrote to Polyform and they gave me this link.. glassattic.com/polymer/baking.htm Per this link I baked at 300 degrees for longer time. It worked! my mask came out the way they did during my bakings on the East Coast.

Thank you so much for your time

Happy claying!
Blanca

Besides the change in altitude, did you do anything else different when you baked your mask? Did you use regular plastic wrap when your clays were packed up? Glad wrap is good, but some wraps will react with your clay, causing leaching (which could cause cracks!) Something to think about… Good luck!

Dulce Tesoros

I just posted some new pictures of some beads and pendants that I’m doing.

Will be waiting to hear from you and see your pictures.