You’re right about the moisture causing placquing or moons in translucent. In fact some of the faux stone techniques suggest you have your hands damp to encourage more of the moons.

I read about a sculptor who avoided the moons by starting in a cold oven like you, but then starting at 100F and adding only 5 degrees more every five minutes until you reached 275F, then starting the timer. You’d basically have to sit on top of your oven for a couple of hours to get this result, so I haven’t tried the technique myself.

Would be worth it I guess if you were doing very large batches or expensive sculptures.

Thanks again Jocelyn! It is such a pleasure having you around this blog… you have no idea!

The only reason I can think of that the freezer is a problem is due to moisture. I stored some of my stuff in a freezer for years, actually forgot about it, and had no problems with the clay or canes when they were thawed, warmed, and dry. This clay and the canes did not contain transluscent clay.

However, I did have a problem with transluscent clay plaquing. I used a lot of the transluscent in all my clay because I loved the way your images popped dimensionally upon baking and finishing. I asked everyone on the old pc forums and boards, and read everything I could find to see if I could figure out why and stop it.

All I can say is that many of those folks who write the books, tuts, and fill the art galleries were very cautious about exposing the clay to moisture, and very generous with their time and advise. CT can be very humid and damp, especially in the summer, when I did most of the claying and baking (toaster oven on the deck, in shorts and shades,lol).

Never did completely eliminate the plaquing, just adjusted my designs to look like it was part of the deal. But, using the air conditioner, not laminating and baking on rainy humid days, and starting with the oven cold with the clay inside (slow elimination of moisture) did make a huge improvement. Also the cold start seemed to cut down on the number of air bubbles in the final product with clay of any kind. I still plunged all transluscent clay into the ice water bath upon removing from the oven.

That same year, I started claying heavily in the winter, and also noticed a big improvement, which I attributed to the lack of humidity. A decade or so later, I mostly do other things in the summer and clay in the winter. I also switched to all Kato clay, and I find that using her transluscent with her other clays greatly reduced the plaquing and air bubbles.

Since folks standardly use water as a release agent for molds and clay in all climates without reporting problems, maybe the process improved. I probably got much better at conditioning clay and paid lots more attention to the details while I experimented. I also settled on one brand, instead of mixing clay manufacturers.

Interested to hear from others and their experiences with this moisture issue. Please share!!! I love the process of experimentation with polymer clay. We each seem to have unique techniques and experiences, and reading the comments here at Cindy’s site has become an addiction in the last couple of months.

For that alone, I cannot thank Cindy enough.

I think where the problem came when people stored their canes in the freezer, was that condensation would collect on the sides when they came into the air. Though since the clay is not water based, I don’t really know why that would be a problem for the canes.

I doubt you’ve done any damage to your stash of canes by putting them in the freezer. I also doubt it had any benefit either, other than making them easier to slice.

Do let us know if you run into any problems with them though. It would be good to add your research to the knowledge base here, so everyone can learn from it!