Over the past few days, I’ve been working on a new jewelry project. While experimenting with different ways to connect two pieces of shrink plastic, I spotted a block of Sculpey on my work table, and decided to try combining a piece of already-baked shrink plastic with some polymer clay. As it turns out, because the baking temperature of the polymer clay is lower than the shrinking temperature for the plastic, it’s absolutely possible to bake clay without warping a finished plastic piece.
To be honest, I’m not really in love with my test beads—they’re kind of boring, and the almond plastic and pearlescent green clay don’t exactly go together—but I’m totally geeked that it actually worked. I can’t wait to use the plastic-and-clay method for future projects!
Neat, right? Have you tried it?
You read my mind! I just need to pick up a few more clay colors and formulate a better plan..
That's super cool! Huge possibilities for modern-looking faux enamel here. Excited to see where your explorations go from here!
Hi
My first piece was perfect. My second shrink plastic shrunk a little bit in the polymer bezel but I went over the whole thing including the shrinky with sculpy satin finish glaze and it filled the small gap at the edge perfectly. It ended up being the nicest, because the glaze has some brush marks like an oil painting – done on purpose. I think my first worked because the shrink plastic was at its minimum size already and the other still had a tiny bit of shrinking to do. They started out exactly the same size from the same stamped image, but were baked at different times. Also the polymer bezel was a bit bigger and thicker on the one, meaning that the polymer was probably hotter itself. I would suggest bringing the polymer over the shrinky a tiny bit more, so if shrinks it is still covered at the edge. Or repair with polymer glaze. The polymer glaze also worked on the pencil crayon dull side, and looks more like a painting than the shiny shrinkie side.