Shopping Basket: 0 itemsBlog
How to Make Polymer Clay Frosting
Last week, I finished up a pair of custom ordered ice cream necklaces, and I snapped a photo while I was working so you can take a peek at the process. All of the gooey-looking color swatches in this pic are my liquid clay “icing” batches that I’ve created over time, and I’ll share with you my techniques for making your own icing.
Making frosting out of regular polymer clay and liquid clay is not one of my favorite things to do. It takes a good deal of elbow grease to combine the two together into a smooth, spreadable paste, and I prefer to create one larger batch periodically rather than whipping up a fresh mix for each project.
How to Make Polymer Clay Frosting
In a small plastic bowl (about 1/2 cup capacity), I chop up white clay and add an equal amount of liquid clay (such as Translucent Liquid Sculpey). Using a popsicle stick, I smear the two together until they resemble putty–this will take a little while, so be patient. I tend to leave this mix fairly dry, because I’ve found that after a mixture of liquid and regular clay has been sitting out for a time (even if it’s properly covered), it tends to dry out slightly, and it requires more liquid clay to “rehydrate” it before use. Rather than waste liquid clay prematurely (it’s not cheap!), I wait until I’m ready to use the frosting for a specific project to create the final, super smooth blend.
This bowl of white clay becomes the base for all of the colored icings that I use in my projects, and my favorite way of storing the colored batches is on squares of parchment paper, which you can see in the first photo above. When not in use, I fold them like little books and store them in neat rows inside my sealed, plastic supply drawers.
To create the colored frostings, take a dab of white base from your supply bowl, smear it on a parchment paper square, add more liquid clay to create the desired consistency, and stir in the pigment of your choice. I like to use crushed artist pastels, but you can also use oil paints or the more expensive pigments sold specifically for coloring liquid clays. One note: If you use a toothpick or other porous tool to stir your frosting, do not store the frosting with the tool. I’ve found that wood (and probably other porous materials would behave similarly) soak up one of the components of the frosting, causing it to dry prematurely.
Email a friend
Share8 Comments
Leave a Comment
Bookmark & Share
del.icio.us
Digg
Facebook
Mixx
Reddit
Stumbleupon
Technorati
Twitter
Stay Informed
Yay! for custom ice cream nrcklaces!!!!!
Woot!
Did you find a your mouse sculpter yet?
Well, I found a few interested artists, but it’s looking like the dolls are more complicated than I thought. For most of the stories I’ve written so far, I need dolls that can both sit and stand (and somewhat moveable arms would be ideal), but I can’t afford to buy multiples of each. So…I’m trying needle felting now.
The saga continues!
Hello Mo
I found you through etsy and was curious about your blog. ADORABLE stuff!
I’m sorry you’re having such issues finding someone to do your mouse sculptures for you. It is true though, if you need them to be able to sit and stand then they would need to be articulated in some way, so they would wind up being more like dolls than figurines. One option is polymer clay dolls with little fabric bodies and bendable arms/legs on wires so that you can pose them, but this would make it hard to keep them cute and compact.
I wish you good luck on your search. I’m worried the needle felting might not give you the look you desire but I hope you can find something that works
I LOVE the fabric bodies/polymer clay dolls idea, Jelena! I swear, these mouse dolls have become the bane of my existence, and in the back of my mind, I’m hoping for a shoemaker’s elves-type situation where I wake up one morning to find the finished dolls sitting on my kitchen table. Dream on, right?
Thanks for checking out my blog!
hello there!
i love everything! your creations are soo darn cute! it must have taken you a great deal of time to be as great as you are now!just so you might know, i wanted to tell you that you are one of my biggest inpirations! i recently started polymer clay earlier this year, and somehow i found your etsy and it lead me to your blog! i am soo happy! thank you for posting this tutorial, me, being a twelve year girl, found it sooooo helpful! i cant thank you enough! i love everything that you make, especially your cakes, your sooo creative when it somes to flavors and deigns! thank you once again!
Aw, thank you so much for the lovely comment, Aeliya! I’m so glad you found the tutorial helpful and that my minis are inspiring you to make some of your own. Polymer clay is way too much fun, so I’m sure you’ll be as obsessed as I am before long.