For the first post, I’m tackling the obvious:

ORNERY CLAY.

We’ve all run across it at some point—that nasty frustrating block of clay that crumbles, flakes, refuses to condition, scatters into a thousand messy pieces at every pass through the pasta machine.

I’ve actually had a student from one of my classes (who had a very successful class, so much so that she ran right out and bought a bunch of clay and equipment), call me up in tears the next week because she had spent an entire day trying to condition a block of premo that simply refused to behave.  She swore off polymer forever based on that experience.

Fortunately for us,  the members of this guild are A: already so addicted to clay we couldn’t quit if we wanted to, and B: ornery enough in our own right that we rise to the challenge with relish.

It helps to have weapons in the arsenal, so let’s do it by the numbers.

Step 1: feel the clay; by now most of us can tell a bad block with just a simple squeeze of the unopened package. This calls for the JanaRobertsBenzon/Nora Pero approach. Take a rubber mallet—like the auto guys use to whack dents out of your car, and start clubbing your block without mercy. Think about all the people who have dissed  you  lately and go to town. About a good minute should do it. If that doesn’t do the trick, go to

Step 2: If you have a dedicated  mini food processor, cut your block up into little chunks, throw it in, and pulse in thirty second increments until it resembles mutant baby peas; then mush it up and start rolling. If you don’t have the food processor, go to

Step Three:  Add stuff to the bad clay. Grab a block of Sculpey III translucent, cut off a slice(about an 1/8 of the block) and roll it through your pasta machine into the thinnest sheet you can; then gather up your crumbly clay into it gradually, rolling it SLOWLY through the machine at each pass, until all of the clay is incorporated and the color is sold—the opacity won’t change a bit, so long as the proportion of trans to opaque remains about 1 to 4. Any Translucent will work, but Sculpey is so soft it makes it a no-brainer. If you don’t have translucent clay, add a few drops of either Sculpey clay conditioner or any liquid clay—TLS, Kato Clear, Fimo Deco gel—to your crumbles and slowly work them together with your hands, kneading and rolling until you can get it through the pasta machine in relatively large pieces—keep adding them together until you can get the whole sheet to run nicely. Nothing like owning that puppy.

Some points to keep in mind:

Warmth helps. Sometime the clay is just cold, and will work into a beautiful sheet just by keeping the process hands on, so to speak.

When you roll your slices through, and it looks crumbly, SLOW DOWN. Cranking it through fast and angry does no good at all.

Turn your clay every time you fold it as it come out of the machine—roll, fold the sheet top to bottom, and then turn so that the fold is on the side; roll it through and repeat. What you are doing is doubling the speed at which the plasticizers in the clay redistribute.

Use your good clay to mop up the bits of bad clay, and incorporate them.

If flaky nasty clay sticks to your  machine rollers, ignore it! Just keep passing the clay through the machine. I guarantee you that by the time your sheet comes together, the clay on your rollers will have magically disappeared.

Remember that the amount of time it takes to completely blend two colors of clay is the same amount of time it takes to properly condition your clay.

Remember too , that this is art, not work; and art is supposed to be fun. If it’s not fun, stop, go have a  decent serving of your favorite guilty pleasure, and come back to it when you’re in a happier frame of mind.

Namaste, Randee M Ketzel

Secretary, APCG