Having recently discovered Kato clay I am now a complete convert. I love the Kato clay to work with and I now find Fimo too soft and sticky (although I now realise this is a problem with fimo at the moment). The problem with Kato is it is SO difficult to condition. I haven’t tried the latest formulation of Kato which is supposed to be easier to condition yet.I have tried some different methods for conditioning Kato clay and here are my...

I am sure some of you know this already but I only just worked it out so I thought I would share it in case some of you don’t know either.I clean my pasta machine with a baby wipe between colours of clay. I wipe  the underside of the rollers (underneath the machine) where the crumbles sometimes collect and I wipe the top whilst turning the handle to make sure the rollers are clean. Sometimes though I still get annoying streaks of colour...

So I have been reading up on sanding and everyone agrees on wet sanding with wet and dry sand paper and also making your item as smooth as possible before baking to reducing the sanding needed. But  I still couldn’t really figure out how long I should be sanding on each grade or how many or which grades of sandpaper I should use. I do know that I have had a few pieces that still had scratches on after sanding so I needed to do it better...

Well if you have made a lot of lentil swirl beads you will already know this but in case you haven’t here’s something I learnt about patterns today (I don’t normally swirl with patterns usually it is just a pile of scrap).I carefully placed a flower in the centre of the ball I started swirling thinking it would look nice swirled – but it disappeared!Swirl lentil bead that started with a flower in the centre that...

Having sanded and buffed a load of beads by hand last week I decided to try buffing with a dremel. I wanted to get a really shiny buffed finish and I had read that you could only achieve this with mechanical buffing. I only started sanding recently and have  been buffing by hand  on a tea towel . I have never used a dremel before, I am borrowing one from my parents.I tried the dremel buffing wheel (sewn muslin one that comes with the Dremel)...

I emailed STAEDTLER who manufactuer Fimo about storing it. Here is their responsePlease store unpacked material wrapped in aluminium foil, in tins or plastic bags (PE / PP). Please avoid unhardened FIMO coming into contact with polystyrene (PS), PVC or Styrofoam, since the surface may undergo a chemical change – as described in your mail.So now you know 😉