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the next bend thursday july 10 2014 sculpey souffle a review i ve been working on and off with souffle the brand new clay from polyform this last month which was very kindly provided for me by polyform i was really excited when the 22 colours arrived as i had spoken briefly with ginger davis allman from the blue bottle tree about it and subsequently read her review post and suspected from what she told me that it might offer some huge advantages for the kind of work that i do i ll just say before i start that i m so glad that ginger reviewed all the possibilities in her comprehensive report because i selfishly am only going to concentrate on the qualities in the clay that relate to my work i don t cane i only mix colours when it suits me nor do i polish work till it gleams so those perhaps challenging qualities of souffle don t bother me when i opened it up i was entranced at how easily it conditions in my hands as i do have some arthritis in some joints legacy of 18 years of glass blowing i don t enjoy having to fight with clay to get it into the condition i want that works for my techniques having said that i do often associate clays that are easy to condition with less than optimal strength and flexibility after curing not so in this case and more on that later i quickly made a hollow bracelet and a large round hollow focal as i told polyform i got very excited because it was so easy to manipulate into hollow forms because of its unique way of stretching my heart started to race lord i really am a material junkie i haven t encountered a clay quite like it before it is possible to make very thin forms with this clay that are quite unbelievably strong and flexible and as ginger had noticed very easy to colour after curing this simplifies several ideas i ve been working on for a while and makes my regular work substantially easier i ve included some photos of some things i ve made with souffle all hollow so you can see there is of course a learning curve with hollow work but i m fairly experienced with it by now the bracelets are unbelievably flexible they are tight on over my hand and have to be eased on gradually souffle allows this very readily with its strength and movement a personal one of my got dropped in a parking lot and got driven over by a car i was so upset with myself but when i looked at it it was only cracked in a couple of places and i was able to repair it with some clay of the same colour it was hollow got squished and cracked and bounced back since i mostly work with a white base at first i was a bit disappointed to have all those colours and only one white brick but to my surprise i have enjoyed working with these fashion colours as i go on to alter them anyway lots of fun to work with a base other than white and to break the strangle hold of one s habits once in while many of the colours are quite luminous under paint and distressing i do just love that robin s egg shade even the bright pinks and maroony reds were fun to work with gotta love a challenge to be honest i started with the pink for testing because i thought i would hate all those shades but when distressed and other wise altered they were quite lovely just one thing i noticed in curing be careful in curing times with souffle especially when you have a piece buried or half buried i cure most pieces for 1 hour and the one time i disobeyed that rule the piece cracked but i do think it bears further investigation as i think the curing was uneven due to being buried and therefore making uneven temperature gradients in the curing piece if you do bury your piece while curing i recommend that you gently uncover it once it has had 15 minutes to semi cure into place be very cautious it s fragile at that stage also re curing i left one of my bracelets in the oven overnight by accident the loooong cure it seems just fine and as flexible as all the others and as ginger noted in her review no colour shift those are the pros for this clay for me now the cons it s summer and this clay does get sticky but i found that if i abandoned my habit of putting the conditioned clay in a plastic bag in my bra to maintain the clay at body heat which was my habit to get other clays to work well in most seasons but particularly the winter then things were much better or i just put the work in progress into the fridge or freezer for a few minutes i m pretty certain that this won t be a problem in the winter as the first morning i played with it the weather was very cool also please bear in mind that i like working with clay that moves a lot and is not stiff at all some users really hate this and find it difficult it is quite floppy when thin which is not a problem with closed forms like hollow beads but more of a problem with open forms like the ribbon bracelets photographed in this post however this is very manageable using a combination of freezer to get it where you need it to be before curing adjustment after chilling and then using supports to cure it i bury support it in a bed of corn starch and baking soda or on polyester fibre i ve even used kleenex nests when i don t have anything else handy i do actually carve work on occasion areas and i don t much like the way souffle carves it is certainly easy but rubbery if that makes sense and the gouge mark is not as clean as it is with harder more dense seeming clays remember that souffle is lighter by 15 but this is nit picking the carving process is certainly easy and this observation just reflects my personal taste and what i am used to also i m truly not skilled with carving tools so that s really it for the negatives but remember every clay has its challenges and i have tried them all i freely admit that i am not faithful to any one clay before this trial i used premo most of the time and cernit kato and pardo for special uses also surprisingly the original sculpey sort of a dead white and very cheap in quantity for some very unique uses so based on my experience with souffle i would view it not as a hobby clay but as a very unique specialty clay that perhaps needs to find the right user you should definitely try it if your work involves any forming by stretching or moving of the clay body or post curing surface painting of any kind as it has a tooth on the cured surface that is very ready to accept paint also try it if you just want a break from really stiff clays my hands appreciate it it s a clay that gets working quickly after you handle it even when you ve let it rest for a long time me i am definitely that user i really think i could be faithful to souffle for hollow work great job polyform posted by claire maunsell at thursday july 10 2014 9 comments friday march 21 2014 vastly overdue shop update well i m committed to a shop update that i ve been avoiding for a good long while a deadly mixture of procrastination uncertainty angst and inertia from too many ideas with no immediate hope of resolution made me think that most of my work should be put on a shelf to age like fine whiskey the hope being of course that it would look better the next time i saw it but you just have go forward and listing and selling and describing the work is part of that one step in front of the other but rest assured that anything really terrible will stay on the shelf where it belongs tuesday at 6 pm i ll be listing owls and other portraits and new strata beads wednesday at 6 00 pm i ll be listing assorted beads all hollows and the new free moving clasps i wrote about in my last post and some new pendants on thursday at 6 pm i ll be listing pods buttons and bracelets lots of listing work ahead and i ll post some more pictures on monday with some other yummy stuff that will be going up including this new hollow fan strata bead with mokume gane surfaces on front and back i love this bead love these tiles have a great weekend 15 more centimeters of snow forecast for tonight into tomorrow hmm first day of spring posted by claire maunsell at friday march 21 2014 4 comments labels productivity shop update thursday march 20 2014 free moving closures this is one of those ideas that has taken me literally for ever to resolve it s been in and out of drawers and pushed to the back of my table far too many times no more i need this idea to finish some necklaces i have planned especially since i personally prefer a shorter necklace length can t go over the head all the time i m also planning to sell some of them and others in the shop so you ll see in the photos that i have left the wire unfinished and sticking out of the mechanism with some length so that anyone who buys it to use in their work can make design choices about how it joins on this may be changed we ll see how it goes you might be wondering why these are at all novel and it s this simple feature the wire stays stationary attached to your necklace while you screw and unscrew the clasp no more tension on the screw buried in the decorative part of the closure that will cause it to undo and the closure itself looks more like a bead than anything else undone there is a simple construction mechanism that i designed i hesitate to use the word mechanism because it is very simple that lets the wire move freely within the bead but remain securely attached very handy great for bracelets as well and a bit of a change from a toggle there are also some other types of clasps i ve been working on these for example two arms are joined by a screw and a polymer covered nut joins and secures the two sides i have plans for much smaller and more fine boned closures of this type but i need to source out really good quality tiny machine screw and nuts perhaps my optometrist could help me here or perhaps you other maker types out there then there s this enough said i ve certainly had an interesting couple of months to start the year best described as alternately exciting and frustrating i have 5 or 6 ideas that are all fascinating to me but were going nowhere for the longest while this was one of them it feels good to have made some progress because my store has surely suffered for my inability to move forward this state of mind often moves into other areas that have no reason to be stalled back tomorrow with news of a shop update it ll be a big one also some other big news posted by claire maunsell at thursday march 20 2014 16 comments labels clasps closures experimentation findings finished work new work older posts home subscribe to posts atom my blog list backyard beads elin exploring the art of polymer clay fleurfatale janebofelt jibby and juna lorelei s blog missficklemedia com palumbo polymer jewelry polymer clay bytes tina holden s beadcomber spilling beauty thirty six ten blog archive 2014 4 july 1 sculpey souffle a review march 2 february 1 2013 8 december 1 september 1 august 1 july 1 may 3 january 1 2012 12 december 1 october 1 september 1 august 1 july 2 june 1 may 2 april 1 march 1 january 1 2011 30 december 2 november 2 september 3 august 4 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