My hot hands melt polymer clay- what do I do?

by Jennifer

Question:
My hot hands tend to make polymer clay go really soft. I know you suggest Cernit and Puppen Fimo as the best polymer clays to use, but I have read that both Cernit and Puppin Fimo go really soft with warm hands.

I have warm hands all the time. Do you think this would be a good combination for my warm hands? Can you please tell me the Texture of the both combined? Is there something else that you would recommend that I can mix 50/50 that will prevent it melting while working with it?

Answer:
Yes, Cernit and Puppen Fimo do go very soft in warm hands. I know this because I have warm hands all the time. The way I get past this problem is to have the sculpture on a strong armature. This way I can hold the armature when sculpting a different part of the body, and the body won't move and sway. The less contact you have with the clay while sculpting- the better. This not only keeps the clay from going soft by your hot hands, but it will help keep the clay clean.
If you start running out of places on the armature to hold, then try series baking.
Series baking means, for example, sculpting the head and torso of your ooak doll, then baking it. Once the polymer clay has cooled, you can started sculpting other sections of the body, such as arms and legs. All you have to do is blend the raw clay into the baked clay and bake it again.

Keep in mind that series baking is risky with Super Sculpey and Prosculpt because they get darker the more you bake them; so you will risk having different parts of the body being different colours.

Series baking allows you to hold onto the baked parts of the body so that you don't squish the unbaked parts. The majority of OOAK Artists will use this method.

Of course, you can use a different clay all together, such a Super Sculpey Firm (remains pretty firm even with warm hands) or Kato, (not quite as firm, but still firmer than Cernit and Puppen Fimo). The problem is, with those firmer clays you start to lose the properties that make Cernit and Puppen Fimo so durable after they're baked.

Unfortunately, there's not a whole lot you can mix into the Cernit or Puppen that will make a lot of difference, unless you nearly eradicate the percentage of puppen or cernit in the mix- so there's not a whole lot of point.

It's up to you. If you find that it's way too difficult for you to sculpt with those polymer clays, you can try the firmer ones. Perhaps don't ship your dolls overseas (unless there's a fragile courier of some sort) and make sure you have a super solid armature. This may help make the other "firmer" clays more durable after baking.

Many different artists use different clays, they just adapt the way they sculpt to cope with the pros and cons. I suggest Cernit and Puppen as it's the best for beginners because they don't need to work around breakages and imperfections as much. But this doesn't mean you cannot use another clay. Try a few different clays and see what works best for you.