Re-Baking Polymer Clay Will Not Harm Your Beads

HELP ..My clay is still soft after baking ! What am i doing wrong? Baked a bead and a 1/4 inch flat circle .I baked at 275 and then 278 using SculpeeII (as pack indicates )clay for 30 min.

Hello again. Recently while making some flat clay cookie cutter pieces for my christmas tree, i discovered that sometimes the clay would curl slightly and not lay flat. I wondered what to do to keep things flat. I found an eye pillow I had made some time ago using flax seeds for filling. This worked great when placed on the item right out of the oven. I have used this a number of times now and it works fine for me. Just thought you might find it useful. Thanks!
dori

That is a cool idea Dori! I bet that works really well for preventing the edges from curling up!

When I bake flat sheets, I bake them in a Ceramic Tile Sandwich. It not only keeps them flat but also helps to prevent air bubbles and funny gaps on the back. You can click the link by my name to go to an article about that.

Hi Cindy, Christine from UK. I was wondering if you could recommend a pen that I can use to write names or words on a polymer bead after baking and before varnishing. I am tempted to use pencil lol but any tips would be great, something that will not fade in the long run. I have not tried normal pen ink as it might smudge it. Thanks for your time, Christine.

Hi Christine! Gel pens work pretty well with baked polymer clay, if you can get the ink to flow. It is not a bad idea to pop it back into the oven after you've written on the clay, so the ink can heat set.

As far as finishes, I've only tried Future Floor Finish with the gel pen and it works great without smudging as long as it is heat set. I would test it if you want to try a different finish though, since I can't tell you for absolute sure if it will work or not.

Click the link by my name for more info on Future Floor Finish.

Can you please let me know if it's possible to bake Fimo and then attach an unbaked piece and re-bake the first bit again too. This is probably really a silly question but I haven't used it yet and want to know if I can make 'bits' at different times. If this is possible how many times can one piece be safely baked and re-baked. Thank you very much for your time. Caroline.

No that is not a silly question at all Caroline!

Yes you can bake a piece as many times as you like. You can add more clay and re-bake over and over until your project is done. Many sculptors do that so they don't ruin something that is perfect (like a nose on a face) while their working on something else (like the ears).

For more info on baking, click the link by my name.

Hi @ all,

I´m just a beginner at PC and after getting mad of ruining unfinished parts of my work i want to try your tip to bake the finished parts.
But I wonder if the clay stays where its supposed to, for example when adding a hand to an arm or your axample of the ear to the head.
Does unbaked PC stick to the baked parts or do I have to build some support structure to make that sure?
The link leads to my blog with pics of my advance with PC

Hi Faber, Welcome! Great questions! First of all let me say you do very good sculptural work! I can see how it would make you mad to ruin a part of your sculpture while working on another part. You can definitely bake your sculpts in stages.

Most light pieces will stick on without moving if you put some liquid polymer clay like Translucent Liquid Sculpey (TLS) or the new and even better product called Studio by Sculpey Bake and Bond. Just put the glue like liquid on the baked sculpted piece where you want to add your raw additions and you'll be fine.

For larger heavier pieces you may need some support while baking, but since the rest of the piece will be hard already, this will be much easier.

I have heard of sculptors using Vaseline instead of the liquid clay for bonding baked and raw pieces together, but since I have not tried that, I can't say how well it works.

I hope that helps. If you want more info on Bake and Bond, click the link by my name.

I see you are from Germany. What city are you from?

Thanks Cindy,
I´ll give it a try.
My hometown is north of Hamburg, called Nortorf. It´s my 1st try with sculpting and it´s huge fun :)
So I guess future work will come. Do you have a gallery, where works can be shown?

Greetings Faber Draconis

Hi,
I tried another way, to prevent destruction of ready sculpting parts :
I bought a scalable heatgun and stabilize those parts, a work of only some minutes :)
The price of 50 € (~ 70 $) was a good investment.