Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Hard polymer clay

ugh, don't you just hate it??? hard clay.
I order most of my clay online, which works well for me and up to this point I have been pretty happy, but the past couple of times I have gotten a few blocks of hard clay. All who work in polymer probably know what kind I am talking about, I don't know if it is because it is old or what but I can not stand it. It slows me way down....It triples my monster making time. Usually from start to finish, in the clay stage I can make a monster in about a hour. when the clay is hard three, no joke!
I have added olive oil to it in the past to soften it but that seemed to take just as long, anyone got any helpful suggestions for softening this evil clay. This shipment I got about 8 blocks of it. grrrrrr.

11 comments:

essie said...

Hi Nicole,
I use this when I have hard clay

http://cgi.ebay.nl/M00211-MOREZMORE-Fimo-Quick-Mix-Baked-Clay-Flexibility_W0QQitemZ140371953089QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item20aed205c1.

I mix this with the hard fimo in the blender/kitchenaid and the clay will be as fresh as new.

Malissa said...

I have seen a liquid that you can add to it to soften it. (maybe just liquid sculpy?) You can go to Dick Blick art supplies and search there- I am pretty sure that is where I saw it. (Just google dick blick if you don't already shop online there. when I was using sculpy it was the cheapest place on it that I could find) Or send it back and don't waste your time!

Unknown said...

thanks Essie and Malissa, I am gonna get me some of that stuff.
:)

Sue said...

UGH, I hate hard clay. I have 4 lbs of prosculpt here at the moment that I've given up on making softer. It was hard when I got it and over the past year has just gotten harder. I just ended up purchasing more prosculpt from a different seller who I knew had good clay. Doesn't pay sometimes
to switch suppliers.

Nicole can you return the clay that you haven't used? If you can, I would do so. The aggravation and time in trying to make it soft is not worth it.

Sue

CindySowers said...

I am not a clay person, as you know, Nicole, but my kids have tons of the Fimo stuff that sits around for years unwrapped, and I sometimes use it for making hat pins or something for cloth dolls. I am too lazy to go to the store to buy new, so I put it in the microwave for maybe 10 seconds, take it out, see if it is soft enough, and keep doing that. There is the point of no return, though, where you have nuked too much :) I obviously am not as picky as you have to be, but it does seem to work on really old clay.

Cody Goodin said...

The clay softener is made by sculpey and it is a liquid called diluent. It actually may be called clay conditioner now. Also, putting in an old food processor and whirling it up will resoften it too. I hope that helps.

DellaRae said...

I bought some at Michaels the other day and when I got it out of the box it was hard. So I returned it with no problem. I should think that whoever you bought it from should make it good.

Lynne said...

Hey there girlie..
I use a food processor dedicated to it. It seems that chopping it up in little pieces, then pushing them all back together does something to it ...scientifically that is.
:)

Sycamore Moon Studios said...

I just warm it up a bit, sometimes under my coffee mug. I've heard that the blender works brilliantly.

Kitika said...

Ugh! There is nothing worse, truly. I've tried the brand stuff too, I think its way over priced when the best thing I've found to use is baby oil. I crumble the clay up, pop it in a ziplock with the oil and mash it up for a minute, or beat on it with some sort of makeshift hammer, (which is also good for getting out the annoyance of having bought hard clay) or run it through the pasta machine in the bag (sounds weird I know, but i don't have a food processor to dedicate to clay). I also unpackage and re-wrap all my clay as soon as I get it to make sure its not old, and that it's in something nice and air tight.

Stephanie said...

i find that to soften clay it needs to me heated up (when you soften clay by hand your hands give off heat to make it more ply-able) so i like to whip out the heating pad! just put the clay in a plastic bag or leave it in its wrapping and wrap it in the heating pad for meybe ten minutes or as long as it takes.