Keeping Clay Clean: To keep Fimo clean while working, first rub some baby oil into your hands, then wash with Lava soap. Also, make sure to clean the handles of any tools you may use and the surface you are working on. Then take a scrap piece of clay and work it with your fingers for a bit before using the good stuff.

After doing all of the above, it may stay clean - unless someone walks by and creates an air current, which loosens a fiber from your shirt, which floats directly onto the clay - oh well, you get the idea.

Cheri Stewart

Keeping Clay Clean: First wash your hands. It doesn't matter how good you are at hand washing, there will still be microscopic "thingys" that transfer to the clay. This is my trick. Get a small piece of Fimo and play with it a little. The little "thingys" will stick to the Fimo leaving your hands clean for the next project. I use the same dirty piece of Fimo over and over. One more tip - use white or ivory Fimo - red and other darker colors will stain your hands. Then you have a whole different problem. By the way, baby wet wipes will get the red Fimo stain off your hands. Some hand lotions work also. Hope this helps!

René Harris

Model Magic and clean hands: Try using either baby wipes or cheap hand lotion to clean your hands before and between colors of Fimo. That takes the colors off better than anything I have found. The Crayola, I think, is a paper clay and, as such, is great for breads, cakes, and things that have texture. I have not used the Crayola but have used several of the paper clays and found them great for this. It can be colored for cake layers or non-white bread loaves with craft paints!

Laura Redman

Keeping Clay Clean: I make dolls from Fimo. I clean my hands with a nail brush before I start, then I keep a pack of wet wipes next to me. I'm also careful what I wear. I wear a lot of black clothes, and I like fluffy jackets in the winter lol! so I take off the fluffy items and put on a pinny! Hope that helps. I made a really grubby doll once, so I'm thinking of making a tramp of some sort (I think they're hobos over there!).

Lynne Connolly

Removing clay stains: The best thing I've found for removing the color from Fimo or Sculpey from my hands is Baby Magic creamy baby oil, followed by Dawn dishwashing detergent.

Alice Zinn

Food Processor to mix clay: I bought the smaller food processor to break up my super Sculpey (which I use for most of my people and animals). I finally opened the box and started using it yesterday and it is a great "hand-saver!"

Alice Zinn

Painting Polymer Clay: Recently, I began experimenting with sculpting animals for the first time. There is a new book out by Katherine Dewey. It is fabulous and describes, in wonderful detail, sculpting of polymer clay animals. See her work here:http://www.elvenwork.com/   She recommends a polymer paint. I went to a model train store and picked up several bottles of acrylic model paint. I wanted to try it before reporting results to you. Well here are my results - WOW! WOW! WOW! I have been using a regular acrylic paint for all of my dolls and it worked well, but not so well when I tried to use it on animal sculptures. Details like razor fine hairs of cats and dogs were almost obliterated when I painted them with my usual paint. The model paint pigment is ultra fine. Spreads into the tiny details, keeps its vibrancy, and every nuance of the sculpture is enhanced! Try it!

Lyn Trenary

Clay tips: The most reliable thing I've found for making sure polymer clay is done is time. Bake it at 275 degrees F. for about 10 minutes per 1/8th inch of thickness, then let it cool. If it isn't hard, rebake. As to adding clay, a tiny dot of tacky glue "anchors" the new piece well while you smooth it onto the base part with a toothpick, your fingernail, the handle of a paintbrush or whatever your tool of choice is. The glue is not affected by baking unless you put on too much and it oozes out. With glue, always remember, LESS is more!

Alice Zinn

Baking Polymer clay: The temperature is more important than the time. I bake at 265 degrees and leave things in for at least half an hour. Leave the item in the oven until cool. Your clay will be soft until it is cool.

Mary Kaliski

What is the difference between bisque, pottery, china, porcelain? The terms "ceramics" or "pottery" signify things made from fired clay. All fired clays are ceramics or pottery, but not all ceramics or pottery are porcelain.

The thing that determines what is porcelain and what is not is the type of clay that is used in making it. The clay that is used to make porcelain allows for extremely high temperature firing leading to a hard, durable form of ceramic ware. When made into something thin, like a teacup, it is translucent. To be strictly correct, only glazed porcelain should be called "china" but today the word is more generally used to mean any shiny glazed ware.

Unglazed fired porcelain is called bisque.

Most pottery is made from clay fired at lower temperatures and often only fired once, whereas porcelain is fired very hot (about 2300 degrees) and, if decorated and glazed, it is fired multiple times. For example, Delft is pottery that is made from a type of clay that is fired at a lower temperature than porcelain. It is glazed with particular tin based glazes and fired. Likewise, Majolica is pottery, not porcelain. The clay, patterns, colors and glazes used to make it distinguish it. If you study pottery you'll find that true porcelain manufacture is comparatively rare because it is time consuming and costly to produce. Think of Meissen, Sevres, Belleek and Lenox as examples of porcelain. These things are light but strong and resist chipping, pottery tends to be much heavier and more likely to chip.

Wedgwood (one e only in the spelling of the real Wedgwood) is not bisque porcelain , it is unglazed pottery. Though often referred to as china or porcelain, a quick check of any book about ceramic wares will verify that it is not. Josiah Wedgwood who founded the company called his product "Jasperware", but that is just a trade name for his pottery. Though his factory did make some porcelain as well, it is his Jasperware pottery that made him famous.

Porcelain dolls require multiple firings and lots of preparation before they are ready to be assembled and dressed. A high firing kiln is required for the making of porcelain, and that is a rather large expense for any potential doll maker. I think the results though, make it worthwhile, since nothing else has the inner glow and delicacy of true bisque porcelain. Besides, when you open the kiln and see all those "little people" you feel positively god-like!

Darlene Focazio

Cooking Polymer Clay: I boil it at 225 - 250 degrees for 10 minutes. Bubbling won't harm your creation. Polymer clay doesn't care where the heat comes from. Boiling reduces fumes and prevents burning. If it isn't done, reboil it.

Judie St. Onge

Storing FIMO: First, do not put it into a hard plastic box, such as you find in the fishing supplies dept., or the DMC floss boxes available as it will eat through the plastic. Plastic box that do work are the ones you buy to store video tapes in. They come in black, a hard plastic, (don't use that) and a transparent, "softer" type of plastic. You can get about 6 or 8 packages in each one. Sometimes I wrap each color in Saran wrap so the colors don't bleed together. But unwrapped and just placed in the box, I have FIMO from 2+ years with no effect to the box. Use the transparent, they're about 99 cents locally. The FIMO does not eat into these. I take wire cutters or old scissors and trim down the two raised circles that hold the VHS tape in giving you a smoother bottom. Also Saran-type wrap is easier than trying to get some out of a bag.

Ruth, Grass Valley, CA

Cooking Polymer Clay: On a craft program the other day, someone demonstrating polymer clay techniques said to bake it on a piece of quilt batting to eliminate the flat spots that come from using a tile.

Marilyn - Wisconsin

Cooking Polymer Clay: I covered some ballpoint pens with Fimo and baked them on quilt batting. As the oven is only at 265 degrees, the batting doesn't burn.

Pat BC Canada

Conditioning Polymer Clays: I heard from an expert that to properly condition Polymer Clay, you must run it through your Pasta Machine at LEAST 20 times! I've been in the habit of doing it 4-5 times. I tried this extended conditioning and I have to tell you that she was right! The texture visibly became more silky, color changed slightly to enhanced original and the working of the finished product was so much better it's well worth the effort! Try it on a small batch and you'll never use 'raw' Polymer clay again. As to preserving it between wax paper sheets? If you keep it for more than a week before using, do the 25 run-throughs again. It settles or something. Remember 20-25 times through the machine or at least 15 minutes of hand kneading... you'll be very, very satisfied with the results. If the clay seems too dry (common with Fimo) add one or two drops of very light machine oil to the surface wipe it thin and fold, then run it through the machine again and again.

Judie, Daytona Beach, FL

Polymer Clay Storage: I keep my polymer clay in half-pint canning jars. I use my husband's fancy jars which he would like to keep for his jam. This way, the clay is safe, colors - commercial and my own mixes - are readily identifiable and it looks quite pretty lined up on narrow shelves.

I keep my 'leftovers' and larger blocks in bigger jars.

E. Westcott

Plates: Recently there have been several people asking about plates, so I thought I would contribute. I make plates and bowls from a two part clay that we can get in South Africa. It is similar to Prattley's putty that is used for fixing car parts. However, in England, I think Milliput would be the closest. Otherwise, air drying clay such as Das, which is available in white, would do the trick and maybe now Paper Clay.

These instructions are for the two-part clay. I take a pea-sized piece of each clay and mix the two together thoroughly. I then roll it between 2 pieces of wax wrap, on a tile, using a glass as a rolling pin. This gets the clay smooth and thin. I take my mold, which is usually a lid of some sorts, and put a THIN layer of Vaseline as a release agent. I lay my clay over it and use my craft knife to cut off the excess. I smooth edges with a "wet" finger. (Sorry, nothing else works!) I leave these to dry overnight and then pop them off their molds. I wash them with HOT soapy water to remove any Vaseline residue. A light sanding smoothes off any rough edges and imperfections.

I make colour photocopies of plates reduced to the right size. They must be full face on, bright and clear. Of course, if you want a dinner service, and not just plates to hang on the wall, then you must make bowl-size copies and side-plate-sized copies, as well. I paint these with decoupage transfer medium, leave to dry and then cut them out VERY accurately. I then soak them overnight or longer (they take no harm left for weeks).

Meanwhile, I paint the back of the plates with decoupage deco varnish to give the back a finished look. I rub the paper off the back of the photocopied plates, leaving a thin transfer. I slide this onto the wet plates with deco varnish, position it, smooth out any bubbles with a wet brush and then leave them to dry. Three coats of deco varnish, with drying time between, finish them off with a shiny finish. They are very addictive and you end up making far more than you need, even given the fact that my dolls house inhabitant collects antique plates!

Barbara Brear in South Africa

Storage of Fimo and Sculpey III: I wrap individual opened colors in saran wrap/plastic wrap, then in smaller Ziplock bags and then into 2 pound coffee tins w/plastic lids, lined with a plastic bag and twist tied shut. I have my two clays stored in several separate marked tins, until I blend them. One each for flesh colors and for other assorted colors. My assorted color Cernit I wrap in saran wrap then larger Ziplock bags, in hard plastic container. All of my clays have kept for years this way. I covered the tins with wood-look contact paper so it looks good and works well.

Regina in Delaware

Baking clay: How do you know if the items you make from modeling compounds are baked enough? Good question, because all ovens whether regular or toaster ovens, bake differently. I presume that you know to bake clay items at anywhere from 250 degrees to 350 degrees F. To test YOUR oven for the correct temperature, do this: Take a kneaded piece of scrap modeling compound, perhaps 1/2" by 1/2". Shape it irregularly and bake at 275 degrees for ten minutes. Remember that modeling compounds, when taken from the oven, are still soft and harden as they cool. When the piece is cool, slice with an X-acto knife. If it crumbles or even just has a whitish cast to the cut side, you must adjust the temperature of your oven to a higher setting.

Another way to test is this: When piece is cool, paint it with a clear gloss and let dry. If the gloss stays tacky, your piece was not baked Hot enough and LONG enough.

I will be adding this information to the ALL ABOUT MODELING COMPOUNDS pages, at WORKSHOP at my website. http://www.pannikins.com/

Mary Eccher

Food processors - I use a small inexpensive food processor. It is a Betty Crocker Mini Chopper and if I remember right was about $15. He is right, tho, NEVER USE FOR FOOD AGAIN. I use the food processor to start blending colors and then transfer to the pasta machine. The processor will warm the Fimo which helps the softening process. I always shave small pieces into the processor before I start it. Don't make it work TOO hard with great big chunks. That would probably burn it out quickly. I have been using this one for about 8 or 10 years and still have no problems. I do use Fimo softener and then add the older colors to it. If you try to just use older drier Fimo by itself you will have zillions of little crumbs and it won't hold together. Remember to do small amounts at a time and as each batch is taken out - stick in a plastic bag and sit on it until you have it all blended. This will keep it warm and ready for the Pasta Machine.

Jane King in Indy