As a child, you sculpted from plasticine? If so, then you will definitely get polymer clay products. This is a fairly plastic material that allows you to create a wide variety of crafts. For some of them do not need special knowledge and skills. Simply show a little creativity.
We will reveal some techniques for working with this material and tell you how to create polymer clay products at home without any difficulty.
A few words about the material
Polymer clay is an artificial material that has similar properties to plasticine or ordinary clay. It is quite plastic, flexes well, rolls and stretches.
Another very important property is solidification at high temperatures. Depending on the manufacturer, this indicator ranges from 100-120 ° C above zero. For this, the craftswomen use ordinary ovens or cook finished products from polymer clay, created with their own hands, on a stove in a pan with water.
After cooling, such crafts acquire the properties of plastic. They are solid, do not crumble, almost do not bend. Thin parts can break, since they are not tough.
Polymer clay is of different colors, which gives a wide field for creativity. In addition, the two shades mix perfectly with each other, leaving no streaks or streaks, unless you need it. Therefore, you can always play not only with forms, but also with a combination of colors, their smooth transition or clear contrast.
How to bake polymer clay products
This issue should be given special attention, since non-observance of some nuances can "kill" your craft almost at the final stage of its manufacture.
Firstly, on each package, the manufacturer writes his recommendations regarding the optimum temperature. They must be strictly observed. This will allow you to get a durable and bright product. If the temperature is lower, the craft may crumble or not freeze at all. At higher rates, polymer clay begins to burn. Brown spots appear on the surface, it smokes with poisonous gas, and the colors lose their brightness. After cooling, such a product will easily break and crumble.
Secondly, even when the temperature regime is observed, polymer clay emits toxic gases. Therefore, the room with the oven should be well ventilated, and the household appliance for cooking can be used only after thorough cleaning.
In order not to wash the oven every time, the craftswomen came up with the idea of processing products in tightly closed baking sleeves. So the gases remain inside this simple device and do not settle on the walls of the oven.
Some types of plastics (the second name of the material) can be "cooked". To do this, boil water in a separate pan, put products in it and boil them for several minutes. Time depends on the thickness of the craft. If not cooked, then inside there will remain a soft core, which will begin to crumble. And if you digest, then the product from polymer clay can burst even in water.
Naturally, the saucepan after such procedures needs to be thoroughly washed before cooking food in it, or even better - to allocate special dishes for these purposes.
Necessary materials
To begin to sculpt from clay, it is necessary to prepare at least a minimum set of tools and materials. Professional masters have a lot more of them, and they have their own specifics, but in order to try working with plastic, most of what is already at home will do.
So, we need:
- polymer clay itself in one or more colors;
- rolling pin (bottle for deodorant or medicine);
- stationery knife;
- one ceramic tile or plastic board;
- set of stacks for plasticine;
- Toothpicks
- foil;
- pencils (shadows, acrylic paints, simple pastel);
- cookie molds;
- tassels.
This set is enough to create simple products from polymer clay. For beginners, it makes no sense to buy expensive equipment and tools. This is already the lot of professionals. Under each specific master class we will give detailed recommendations, what else can be used in a particular case.
The easiest modeling
There are many techniques and methods for working with plastic. All of them with their nuances will not fit in one article. To do this, you need to publish a special multi-volume book. Here we will consider simple products from polymer clay, step by step we will analyze the stages of their manufacture.
Let's start with the simplest - ordinary sculpting. We knead a piece of polymer clay well in our hands and begin to sculpt simple figures. It can be fruits, vegetables, household items. The photo above shows the simplest workshop for making wing pendants. To do this, roll several sausages of the same thickness of different lengths and blind them together.
At the final stage, we lay out the longest sausage over the workpiece with a spiral and lower its end down. This is a great base for earrings or pendants for necklaces and bracelets. So that you can then hang them, insert a bijouterie pin with an eye inside. They can be bought at any handicraft store. But there is a small nuance: after baking, they can freely fall out of the holes. To eliminate this drawback, when the workpieces have cooled down, glue the pins with ordinary superglue.
Now you can bake our workpiece. So just in a few minutes you will create your own original earrings. Hooks for them (shvenzy) are sold in the same stores.
Original buttons
Do you have something from clothes, why are there not enough beautiful buttons? Make them out of polymer clay. It is simply elementary.
Mash the plastic and roll it on the board with a uniform layer, cut out circles or squares of the required size from it and use a toothpick to pierce the holes. All the buttons are almost ready. It remains only to bake them. But you can make even more original products from polymer clay.
For this you need a texture sheet. It is perfectly replaced by a piece of embossed wallpaper or any other surface. When you rolled the plastic, put a relief sheet on top of the texture to it and roll it well. Carefully remove and you will see a clear print of the pattern on the surface of the polymer clay. From this cut the blanks under the buttons.
If you want to decorate the product even more, take the shadows or pastel crumbs and use your finger to walk along the surface of the product. This will more clearly highlight the embossed pattern. After baking, it is better to cover such buttons with acrylic varnish so that the pigment does not crumble over time.
Texture decoration
The creation of texture decorations is one of the trends in the modern world of plastic jewelry. The photo above shows that it’s not difficult to create them, but they look amazing. Find everything that has a relief in your house, retype it on the surface of polymer clay and combine several textures in one product.
Making products from polymer clay in this way significantly diversifies your jewelry box, helps you create jewelry for specific outfits and eliminates the problems with choosing gifts for friends.
This direction is so popular among needlewomen that there are even craftsmen who create designer silicone texture mats, which they then sell to other needlewomen.
Modeling Thumbnails
Each craftswoman has her own favorite technique for working with plastic. Thumbnails are one of them. This is the creation of exact reduced copies of everything that can be found in everyday life. From these miniatures you can make jewelry, paintings, jewelry, toys for children. We will consider an example of how to make a fridge magnet in the form of a cake. It can easily become both a pendant and a brooch.
A detailed master class of work is presented in the photo above. First of all, you need to make the cupcake itself. To do this, give the brown piece of plastic an appropriate shape with a toothpick and a toothbrush.
Next, we make pink cream from sausages, which we also work with a toothpick. After that, turn on the fantasy and make a variety of fruits, with which we will later decorate our “cream”. When everything is ready, bake the workpiece.
Here is such a simple master class of a product made of polymer clay will help you decorate your own refrigerator with original magnets, and you will always have original gifts at hand if you have no time left to buy something serious.
Flower earrings and bracelets
Flowers in jewelry never go out of style. So why not create your own original jewelry with your own hands to match your favorite dress?
For work, we need plastic of pink (or favorite) and black shades, beads (can also be made of plastic), bijouterie pins with round heads, rings and earrings.
Let's start by making leaves. Roll out small pieces of plastic in the shape of a cone and flatten them with your fingers. Next, with a toothpick, draw veins.
Flowers are a little more difficult to make, but not so much that beginners can’t cope with this. A polymer clay product consists of several thin pink cakes. To make buds from them, we take the handle of the brush and dip it in water. So the workpiece is better then removed from it. Glue the cakes to the wet end of the brush and form flowers from them. When the product is removed from the handle, in the center we make a hole for the pin in it.
Roses are also made from the same cakes, but in a slightly different way. We spread them in a row with a slight overlap on each other. Therefore, this "caterpillar" must be rolled up. From a more beautiful edge we form a bud, and cut off the opposite with a clerical knife. We make a hole under the pin.
When the flowers and leaves have already been baked and cooled, you can begin to assemble the jewelry. Its basis is a chain of bijouterie rings, on which all the elements on pins are hung with wire cutters and thin nippers.
Filigree
This is another simple but rather elegant technique. It is not suitable for those who do not like or do not know how to work with subtle details. Such products made of polymer clay, laid out with their own hands, will surprise many.
The essence of the technique lies in the fact that it is necessary to lay out small elements on the basis, while creating some kind of picture. The photo above shows a floral ornament. In fact, there is no limit to fantasy in creating your own stories.
So, to work, you need a plastic base and small pieces of multi-colored polymer clay. A toothpick or a needle acts as an instrument. It depends on the sizes of the elements you are going to work with.
When the background is prepared, you can make an approximate markup of what you will lay out on it. Then we take a small piece of plastic and give it the desired shape: ball, cone, oval, sausage. We gently pry this element with a needle and transfer it to the desired place by slightly pressing it into the background. The dent that will remain on it will depend on the direction of the needle. Therefore, be careful to turn this "flaw" into a decorative effect.
Animal figures
As a child, you definitely sculpted doggies from plasticine. You can create today such a product from polymer clay with your own hands. In the photo above there is a detailed master class on how to make a Yorkshire Terrier figurine. We will not disassemble it in more detail, because all the stages of work are presented here.
But we should mention some nuances. It’s not necessary to make a large figure entirely out of plastic. This material is expensive, and such a product will be baked for a long time. What is the way out of the situation? Plain food grade aluminum foil. From it, too, you can "sculpt." Tear off a large piece of foil and roll it tightly, giving it the desired shape. When the base is ready, wrap it with a layer of plastic that will hide your trick.
Further, all work is performed, as if you made the body of a whole piece of polymer clay. Outwardly, these products are no different from others, as is the work with them.
And the second trick. To ensure that the workpiece is well baked, if it has an impressive thickness, before each step send it briefly to the oven. So the inner layers harden simultaneously with the outer ones on the final baking.
What can be made of plastic?
We figured out how do-it-yourself craftsmen create products from polymer clay with their own hands. But it is not entirely clear why this is necessary and what their practical application is?
This material is so versatile and has such a number of decorative possibilities that it can be used in various industries. They make jewelry and accessories for clothes from polymer clay, decorate dishes, sculpt paintings and interior figures, create toys for children.
The main thing to remember is that this material is relatively durable. Therefore, to create objects from it, on which there will be some load, there is no point. They will not stand it and pretty soon become worthless.
Elements from polymer clay are perfectly combined with other materials. All this is due to the fact that with the help of plastic, you can imitate the structure of wood, fabric, ceramic clay, leather. All this allows you to make from it those details that can never be created from other materials. That is why polymer clay quickly took its position in the world of arts and crafts.
Modeling as a business
Having tried once, many masters can not leave their classes with plastic. Constantly buying this consumable is expensive, but the level of their skill allows you to put finished products on sale. For some, this is a way to recoup the costs of their work, and for some, the main source of profit is polymer clay. Products of world-famous masters can cost hundreds, or even thousands of dollars. And this is not surprising, because they offer an exclusive product created in a unique author's style, often in a single copy.
Therefore, if you liked this lesson, feel free to hone your skills, look for what works best for you and expresses your personality as an author.
You ask: where to sell products from polymer clay? The "Fair of Masters" and many resources for needlewomen are excellent platforms for declaring themselves. You can also exhibit your masterpieces on free bulletin boards, create thematic groups or pages on social networks, invite friends, arrange with some store so that they take them for sale. A lot of options! But it is worth remembering that the competition in this market is huge. And to stand out from the mass of other needlewomen, you need to offer high-quality original goods at the right price.
In any case, do not be afraid to create and create your own masterpieces, even if they are only for you. In creativity, the main thing is to enjoy the process and the result.