So I'm currently working on an annual project that I do for the middle school youth at our church. When the 8th graders graduate to the high school youth group they are given a gift which I've been blessed to be asked to make for the last 7 or 8 years I guess. The youth director comes up with an idea of what he would like, a vision if you will and he lets me take it and create it. Up till now, the gifts have always been a type of large medallion sculpted from polymer clay but this year's design seemed more appropriate for something that would sit on a table or shelf. The photo on the left is my work space. The drawing on the right is the design for this year.
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I purchased all the clay for the project and unfortunately got an absolutely awful batch of red. If you are not familiar with polymer clay, it is made to be sculpted and then cured in the oven at a low temperature ( 275) for a short time (15-20 min) which makes it hard and permanent. Unfortunately, this batch either sat on a hot truck or on a sunny loading dock for too long and the red clay is partially cured making it almost impossible to condition and mold. Normally this type of clay is very pliable and it is a simple matter to condition it with your hands and sculpt and mold it into whatever you would like. In the first picture you see normal clay that is pliable and very easy to condition on the right and the dry, crumbly clay that has been partially cured on the left. In order to make any of this clay usable it had to be mixed, blended and conditioned into the little bit of good clay that I was able to get. The second picture is in the middle of the process as I add more and more of the dry, crumbly clay to the good, smooth clay.
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Needless to say, it took days of mixing and conditioning with my pasta machine to get the red clay usable enough to make the simple heart shapes needed for these pieces. It was maddening and exhausting but thankfully that part is done. Now I'll move on the the real sculpting and hope that the white clay I need to use has not faired as poorly as the red.
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