Making your own clay charms or creations is really not that hard. When I first discovered clay charms on my search through kawaii blogs, I immediately wanted to buy some clay and make my own charms straight away! And I'm sure there are many people out there who were just as keen as I was. But sooner or later it became apparent to me that making clay charms requires an extensive list of materials and tools. So before you jump into the world of clay creations you might want to ask yourself a few questions.
Probably the first decision you need to make when embarking on your road to creating your own clay charms is deciding what type of clay to use. Many of the blogs that I followed were from people living in America and the type of clay that was most popular was Polymer Clay. For those who don't know, Polymer Clay is a type of clay that contains PVC and liquid plasticiser and you need to bake it in an oven for it to harden. Usually the stuff comes in an array of colours and sizes and you can mix several colours together to achieve the colour you desire!
It sounds pretty simple, except for the fact that in Australia the stuff costs $5.25 for 75g...Another thing that I found quite annoying was the idea of having to mix different colours together to achieve the colour you want. I suppose you could add acrylic paint to the clay but I've heard that may create difficulties when baking it such as bubbling. Other methods include painting on-top of the clay once it has hardened or even before baking but the original colour of the clay will still remain underneath the paint.
If you're willing to spend the money then Polymer Clay is definitely suitable to make your clay charms and is still by far the most popular type of clay to use. I bought a whole bunch of colours of Polymer clay online for $12 and the stuff is fun to play with.
But if you ask me, Polymer clay is not the type of clay that I prefer to use. In Japan, people would often make miniature food charms using Paper clay and so it was super popular over there. Paper clay is a soft, air-dry clay which means you don't need to bake it. All you need to do is leave it out to dry and eventually it will harden. Similar to Polymer clay, Paper clay comes in several colours and you can simply mix colours together to achieve the colour you desire.
What I love the most about Paper clay is the fact that you can add acrylic or water-colour paints to colour the clay itself. You can also paint on-top of it. As a result I only ever buy white Paper clay and add different coloured paints to change its colour.
Another handy benefit of Paper clay is that you can add water to the clay whenever it feels a bit too dry. Softening or reconditioning dried out Polymer Clay is horrible and sometimes I just can't be bothered and throw it all out. But with Paper clay it's hardly ever a problem. You can easily prevent dried out Paper clay by spraying it with water from a spritz bottle before storing it away.
I guess if you're not too picky you can use whatever clay you want. Both Polymer and Paper clay seem interchangeable but it really depends on what you're making and what you plan on doing with it. I personally prefer working with Paper clay and I rarely use Polymer clay thus I don't know too much about it...
So I hope I haven't bombarded you with this waffly debate on clay. But these are the things you should be considering when starting your clay creation journey. Maybe the next post will continue on the list of materials and tools or maybe I'll show you something that I created. Happy clay making!
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