Polymer clay pros and cons and my first experience of working with it

Hello! In this blog I'll share my artworks using different materials, my work experiences and useful tips that I get to know by working or by searching on internet to improve my creations.
I loved to create sculptures out of ordinary water based clay (still love it!), it was the only material which I could access with no problems. Recently I discovered a new material: polymer clay! Though it's not a natural substance and there are things you should be careful of for your safety while using the unbaked clay, there are many benefits to it too:

•  The most important of all for me is that it doesn't dry! At least not in a month or two. Being so much busy during the day I can't always work on the same project for several days. While my ordinary clay projects began drying, even being water sprayed and covered by a plastic bag, my polymer clay projects stay there without any change for weeks!

• The second benefit is that I don't have to travel to get my works fired in a special kiln. All I needed was a small electric oven, and my polymer clay projects are baked in less than 30 minutes with only 130 °C temperature! That's too cool! I keep this little oven on the balcony, so the gases produced during the baking wouldn't create any risk.
• The third benefit is that they can be colored so easily using normal Acrylic colors, while colors can be fixed by baking the work in the oven, they can always be cleaned using the normal liquid you use to remove your nail polishes!
•  Another pro is that great detail can be added on small scales of polymer clays. While for normal water base clay I couldn't achieve this easily, maybe because I'm self-taught and haven't yet discovered the right techniques, or maybe because of the consistency of normal clay. However I find creating small scaled and detailed projects much more possible than any other material I know.

Talked about the pros, but there are also cons. What I personally find as a problem working on small scaled projects is that while you try to add detail on a part of your sculpture, you may suddenly notice that the other part have been deformed under your fingers pressure while you were too concentrated on the details of the other part of the sculpture.

Here is my first polymer clay work, a realistic miniature baby doll. There are defects, but as the first work I just love it and I hope to learn more by working more, so that I can correct these defects in the future projects.

 

This doll is now available on my Etsy shop with a special price!