The Heartbreak (sometimes) of Polymer Clay

This past weekend I was working on some more faerie houses. Some were teeny-tiny, like this one. Which strangely enough was purple before baking, but it's coloured with alcohol ink which sometimes changes in the oven. But wow, hot pink?!


I photographed it with my awesome new glasses to show the scale. Ok, so you're thinking an unexpected colour change is not that upsetting, and you're right.

Here's the upset. After the tiny ones, I started work on another, larger faerie house, it's in scale with with the earlier houses on this blog. It started life as a night light bulb thoughtfully modelled here by my assistant, Grimwald.


This is what it looked like after the first layer of clay was applied. Oh, and aluminium foil was wrapped around the base of the bulb first.


After more work and another layer or two, (that Grimwald is such an attention hog!) it looked like this from the back.


Do you ever have those days in the studio when it seems like nothing is coming easy? Things are working and coming together, but with difficulty? And taking longer than they normally would? That's what I was experiencing this past weekend. So finally after more work and detailing, etc., here it is, oven ready.


I popped it in the oven, set the timer on my phone, and walked away to take a break, very happy to finally be done with that part of that house!

I'm always excited to see my stuff come out of the oven. It's a rewarding moment, a "Yes, I did it!" moment. Of course sometimes it doesn't go as planned, but even that is helpful because I figure out what doesn't work. This time though, was neither of those things. I took it out of the oven to discover a great big crack running vertically most of the length of the roof! And I hadn't even done anything wrong. I didn't have the oven temperature wrong or the clay too thick or anything that I could think of, but sometimes cracks happen. I was so bummed. It was too big to easy fix so I waited for it to cool and back-filled and re-textured and re-baked, only to drop it taking it out of the oven. And of course the clay being still soft from the heat, you can guess what happened. I wanted to cry! So to shorten what's becoming a long post, I recovered the entire roof, adding filigree 'cause I wasn't happy with the swirl on top. And it still has a little flaw. *sigh* It's a good thing I don't want perfection.

Anyway, here it is, finished.