Creative Talk: Polymer Clay

Hello everyone and happy weekend! A few days ago I discovered polymer clay. I heard about it before, but I've never tried it myself: it looked so difficult to do. Boy was I wrong! In this post I'll share with you a few cute figurines I made. For those of you who are not familiar with this, polymer clay is like Play-Doh, except that after you've made it, you cook it in the oven, and it becomes hard as a rock and forever keeps its shape (and color).

I've only made 4 tiny figurines so far: two penguins and two snowmen. The way I do them is basically 'monkey see - monkey do': I googled 'polymer clay', and I recreated what I saw. There are so many talented people out there, but polymer clay is very easy to work with, so don't be discouraged. The polymer clay brand I use is called FIMO (CLICK HERE), and it's the only brand I've been able to find in my country (I do recommend getting the SOFT version since it's easier to work with). You know, none of the stores I usually go to had it, so I had some difficulty finding it, weird, huh?

Because I didn't make a step-by-step tutorial, I thought I might describe how I made these little guys. A few general tips: always wash hands in between working with different colors, especially if you're working with white, since it stains easily. Tools will come in handy, but if you have none, a toothpick will be enough. Also, dust grabs like crazy on these things before you bake them, I totally forgot about this and I left them outside, so there are dust particles on them (#sad). Tips for baking: follow the instructions on the label and place your figurines on baking paper. Also, be careful when you take them out, one of my snowmen was fine after baking, but I dropped him because he was hot and his nose broke off (totally my fault, sorry little dude). Also, you can draw on these figurines with a black marker once they're baked, but I think they look cuter when they're made entirely out of one material. However, I'm still learning about this, there are some Youtube tutorials, so it might be better to listen to people who've done this a lot longer (and a lot better) than me.

PENGUIN INSTRUCTIONS: create the body - create the head and attach it to the body - make sure the figurine stands and doesn't fall over - make two yellow circles and flatten them, then jam the body on top of them (feet) - attach the hands - create the white belly and face (flatten a ball) and attach it - place the beak first, then the two tiny eyes - don't forget to put a little round ball in the back, as a tail - with a toothpick make the nostrils on the beak and marks on the feet - attach the tie or the flowers on the head (flowers are made by rolling a straight line of clay) - bake.

SNOWMAN INSTRUCTIONS: roll up balls for the body and head, put them all together and make sure it stands upright - attach the scarf - attach hands if you want them - place buttons on the body - put buttons on the face (eyes and mouth) - put on hat or headpiece - attach nose (you want to keep the nose for last, because it sticks out and it's the most delicate part) - bake.

So there you have it. I just had to share this because it's so much fun and these little guys are so adorable and cute. It's not exactly a piece of cake making these, since the FIMO clay can be very hard and my hands hurt sometimes, but the results are amazing. I'm so glad I discovered this awesome new hobby. What do you think? I've done a topic like this before, remember the DIY colorful necklace LINK?

Make sure to leave your thoughts below, and have a great weekend,

xoxo, Jelena.