Polymer Clay Message Board - Polymer Clay Forum - The Clay Store

conimaj · Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2008 3:33 pm Post subject: I need help baking my clay

I'm fairly new to Polymer. I've baked in my oven before with no problems. Now that I want to start doing it more often, I thought it would be better to use a toaster oven. If I'm going to be doing it on a regular basis, it's probably safer than having those fumes in my oven where I cook food for my family. I would be willing to bake it in my oven if there is a safe way to do it. I'm not cleaning my oven after every time I bake clay.

I thought I read somewhere that you can bake in your oven in a shoe box and then take the box outside to open it and it will contain all of the fumes. I can't find anything about now. Does anyone know about this?

So in attempt to not use my regular oven, I got a small toaster oven. I'm using sculpey III and it says 15 minutes but it is burned before it even gets to 5. I mean it looks like the top of an oreo cookie. I baked it on a ceramic tile with a foil tent over it to defer the heat. I baked it at the lowest temp possible. I baked it in another toaster oven and got the same results. I'm starting to feel less like I'm doing crafts and more like I'm doing a science experiment.

The most frustrating part I think is that books and internet research have gotten me no where. It's like the entire section on baking it says "oh yeah, then you bake it. No big deal" and doesn't talk about all of these problems that I've been running into.

The Clay Store · Site Admin Joined: 21 Apr 2005 Posts: 35

Hi there,

I only bake in the oven so I don't have much experience with using Toaster Ovens for Polymer Clay. I did find a lot of information on baking in general on the Glass Attic site, here is a link:
http://www.glassattic.com/polymer/baking.htm

Check this out and see if if gives you the information you need.

Regards,

Susan
The Clay Store

conimaj · Posted: Fri Jan 25, 2008 12:08 pm Post subject:

Susan, that was quite helpful. It was nice to know what to "expect" from the clay. Like I wasn't sure how to tell if it was done and that it still would be flexible! Thanks for that link.