Polymer Clay Basics

One of my all time favorite things to do as a kid was make Sculpey with my friends or my brothers probably every single day for years after school or on weekends. Sculpey is my favorite brand of oven bake polymer clay. It’s easy to manipulate and stays soft forever until it’s baked in the oven. It’s so easy for kids to use.

Currently, Sculpey is a major favorite in our house. Not just with Lilly either (she’s 9 and in 3rd grade) but with Gracie who is 7 and in 1st grade and with Sally too who is 4. She has loved making things with Sculpey for awhile now though so that started when she was just 3 years old!

We look at lots of inspiration on Pinterest. Here is a link to my Sculpey inspiration board. We save all kinds of ideas there! But for the most part the girls make anything they want and honestly need very minimal help from me. You really only need the Sculpey to get started but here are the things we find helpful to have:

1. A big colorful pack of Sculpey. Try this first before you buy tons of individual blocks of color.

2. A tool kit– tools intended for fondant cake decorating work really well with modeling clay!

3. Small baking pans– totally not a must have but my girls will make things for a week and keep adding them to the little baking pan and I’ll bake them all at once so it’s nice not to have one of my “real” pans tied up.

4. A box or container for storage. Ziplock bags work fine but we use and love boxes like these. The sections are great for organizing!

5. Last but not least, a giant block of white. We use white SO much in the house. It gets mixed in to lots of colors to lighten them and just seems to disappear so quickly. The big block of white is perfect to have on hand.

I didn’t include “little parts” in the list but you can add all sorts of things to the sculpey before baking: marbles, glass beads, soda caps, pop tops, nails, keys (anything metal), tiny metal boxes, pistachio shells etc. Sculpey gets bakes at 275 for 15 minutes so it’s fairly low heat.

You can also use all kinds of other things to Shape and texturize polymer clay. Toothpicks, skewers, forks, cookie cutters, tin foil, beads, ends of pens or markers etc.

I love seeing what the girls come up with. Lilly loves making little figurines (above) and Gracie loves making little worlds- trees for tiny bug pets, hamsters with houses and food bowls, little accessories like milk jugs and yarn balls.