A Plan to Try New Techniques

Over the reading break, I went into Micheals with the hope of finding new colors of polymer clay. However, it seems like using polymer clay has become a popular hobby during our current lockdown, as the available options were very limited. I had a friend suggest to me that I should use paint to color my polymer clay. This seems quite promising to me as I had some acrylic paint back at home. I decided to do some research on how to color polymer clay with acrylic paint and found some useful tips. This YouTube video gives a comprehensive look at how different types of paints react with the polymer clay when mixed and baked. The person who made this video does find that using acrylic paint does create air bubbles in the final product, as the water in the paint creates steam while baking. I found that this video overall was incredibly helpful as a beginning step of looking into this technique, and things to look out for.

Another option I have to color polymer clay is to apply paint directly onto already baked clay. Painting the clay beforehand is an option, but can also cause issues due to water evaporation. This is something I am interested in doing, but I am afraid of leaving paintbrush streaks on the clay. As well, I do not have a spray or paint on sealant to keep the paint from chipping/wearing off over time. This is another consideration when thinking about what new techniques I can try out. I have run out of time this week to try out these techniques, but I hope to try out something new over the weekend! Stay tuned for my results.