How to Smooth Polymer Clay (Beginner Prep Guide)

Before you touch the clay, spray your workbench down with isopropyl alcohol. The alcohol picks up the dust and lint particles that would otherwise stick to the clay the second you put it down. A ceramic tile or glass mat is the easiest surface to keep clean.

Wipe everything else too - the pasta machine rollers, your tissue blade, your acrylic roller. Even if they were put away clean, dust finds clay. Five minutes of cleaning saves an hour of sanding later.

Conditioning means working the clay until it's evenly soft and pliable. Knead it in your hands, or run it through a pasta machine on the thickest setting and fold it back on itself a few times. Body heat plus pressure is what does the work.

Check progress with the bend test: roll the clay into a thin sheet, fold it in half, and look at the crease. If the fold cracks, the clay isn't conditioned yet - keep working it. A clean fold with no cracking means you're ready to start sculpting.

Polymer clay that's been sitting on the shelf comes out firm. Cernit and Pardo in particular need warmth before they'll cooperate. Cut the block into thin slices first - that way the warmth from your hands or the room reaches the center of each piece, not just the outside.

You can also sit on the cut pieces (yes, really) for a few minutes, set them in a sunny spot, or bash them flat with a rolling pin to soften them by pressure. Don't try to force cold, hard clay through a pasta machine - it'll shatter into shards.

If the clay still won't budge after warming and kneading, reach for a softener. Sculpey Clay Softener and Cernit Magic Mix are the two common products. Both work the same way - they add back the plasticizer that's evaporated out of old clay.

One or two drops at a time. That's it. Squeeze the bottle gently and add a drop, knead it in, and check the consistency before adding more. Too much softener and the clay turns oily and sticky, and you'll have to leach it back out (next step). Err on the side of less.

Sometimes a fresh block comes out of the packet too soft - sticky, smeary, and impossible to keep clean. Leaching fixes it. Roll the clay flat, place the sheet between two pieces of plain copy paper, and leave it for ten or fifteen minutes. The paper absorbs the excess oil.

Check it regularly. If you leach too long the clay goes back to crumbly. Two to five minute checks are right. Once the clay feels firm and stops sticking to your fingers, peel it off the paper and you're ready to work.

Spotted a piece of lint stuck to the surface? Don't try to pick it off with your fingernail - you'll dent the clay. Dip a cotton tip in a small bowl of isopropyl alcohol, dab off the excess, and gently roll the wet tip over the lint. It transfers right onto the cotton.

This is the last check before baking. Specks of lint that bake into the surface are almost impossible to remove cleanly afterward - you'd have to sand and re-buff the whole piece. Thirty seconds of lint-picking now saves real time later.

Air bubbles trapped under the surface bake into hollow lumps. Catch them before they go in the oven. Hold the clay up to the light, find the bubbles, then run a tissue blade or craft knife across each one to release the air. Smooth the clay back down with your finger or re-roll it.

Prevent new bubbles when you're using a pasta machine: feed the folded edge of the clay in first, not the open end. The fold pushes air up and out instead of trapping it inside.