Hello! My name is Valerie and I’m a Craftaholic. This should not surprise you in the least, but I got the chance to try something new this week. I have been hearing all about Sculpey Clay everywhere, and I wanted to see what all the buzz was about, so I headed off to Pat Catans and picked up some. This is where the fun begins.
Last year I went wild and made some really adorable ornaments with Salt Dough. They turned out really nice and I love the ones that I have on our tree, and as well, I made a bunch of them for the family too. Click HERE for my Salt Dough post & recipe. But after hearing about Sculpey Clay, I was wondering if I was missing out on something, so I had to get some to try.
From what I can tell you, Sculpey Clay comes in many, many, many colors. The majority of the clay comes in 2 ounce packages for around $2.99/ea, but they do have larger packages of the clay in a 1 pound size for around $11.00. I picked up the white Sculpey Clay in white in the 1 pound size, and also chose a yellow, a red, and a pink in the 2 ounce sizes so I could experiment with the colors.
So here goes how you use Sculpey clay… just cut off a chunk of the clay with a knife and knead it in your hand until it becomes pliable. Next, get out your rolling pin and roll it out on some wax paper to whatever thickness you want. For an experiment, I rolled my clay pretty thin as I wanted to see how thin I could make something (ie: to use less clay on an ornament). I then took one of my round cookie cutters and cut a circle out of the clay. Then I chose a cute snowman rubber stamp and just stamped it in the piece I just cut out. It made a really nice impression in the clay and I already liked the results. Then I just took a small skewer and poked a hole for hanging in the top of the ornament. (As you can see from the photo below, I even stamped one ornament in ink first, then stamped it on the clay)
You bake Sculpey Clay at 275 degrees for 15 minutes. (NO LONGER!) Since this was the first time I was doing this, I watched carefully for the entire 15 minutes to make sure I did not burn the clay. I think I might have even taken out the pieces a few minutes early and just left the cookie sheet on top of the oven. The pieces were hard, as the clay baked nicely, but if you do take your pieces out a few minutes early and they are not completely hard, they will harden sitting on top of the warm oven.
The results? I am so impressed with how the Sculpey Clay ornaments turned out and will definitely be making more. I am very satisfied with Sculpey Clay and I am sure that I can find more items to make with the clay like a stamped bowl or something creative like that.
So, if I had to compare the Salt Dough Ornaments with Sculpey Clay, I would choose the Sculpey Clay hands down. What I noticed that happened with the Salt Dough is that most of the time the ornament bubbled in the oven and the surface of the ornaments were not flat. The Sculpey Clay ornaments never changed shape or size, nor did they bubble when baked. And, you can make your ornaments thinner with the Sculpey Clay than with the Salt Dough. The photograph above shows one coat of paint on my gingerbread man ornament and I will be adding one more coat of paint, then I will brush on a coat of clear varnish to top it off.
As you can see from the above photograph, the difference in thickness of each ornament. Sculpey Clay is on the left, the Salt Dough on the right. It was hard for me to photograph the white Sculpey Clay ornaments and truly show you the detail that my rubber stamps made, but you can click on the photographs to view them larger. If anyone has any questions, let me know. At this point, I am definitely just a beginner with Sculpey Clay, but at least I can discuss my findings with you if you need some help.
What new product have you tried out lately?
Nikitaland 
Since the salt dough can be made at home if the kiddies want to play, I guess that’d still be a good option. Both look fun! Little miss crafty you 😀
I am a craft-a-holic for sure! I keep seeing all of the hype about Sculpey Clay and I had to try it. Now I know what all the fuss is about! I love it! I want to definitely try to make a little stamped bowl for me now!
I actually bought some for that exact same project 😀 I saw it on a blog I read sometimes. Have fun kiddo!
Every time I see Sculpey clay, I let out a huge sigh lol… I hate that stuff! But it’s because we used it at work to make clay paw prints for the parents of euthanized pets. We would have so much work to do but had to spend 30 minutes trying to knead this stuff out and make it nice and pretty for our clients. It was worth it, but I’m not sure management fully appreciated the time it took to make a nice paw print.Your ornaments look fantastic though! I think making ornaments with it would be much more fun.
Aw, that would be sad to have to make paw prints for families who lost their pets. That would make me cry. Using Sculpey Clay is much more fun making ornaments. Perhaps you can give it a try! 🙂
That is cool. Can you paint the ornament or put some glitter on it? Clear glue and glitter might be cool.
Oh yes, you can paint them, just like you can paint the salt dough ornaments too! I brush a clear varnish on them when I am done painting too. Oooooh, I like the glitter idea too!
That’s just great, specially to make small items. I will look if they have it in the store here too. Thanks :o)
You can make them small to use for gift tags too and tie them on your packages! Just don’t eat them!
hahaha, I don’t do it. Butt my mom and her freaky cousins… they made fimo-cupcakes and ate it… silly girls…
Now that is funny!
LOL but not for the girls, they got emetic agents and the whole family was up in arms :o)
I’m not sure if we have that in the UK but will definitely look out for it in the craft shop, love the idea of making ornaments:-)
Hey Misaki! If you don’t have Sculpey Clay where you are, then you should give the salt dough recipe a try. They do turn out really nice! I made a bunch of snowmen ornaments for our tree last year and the tree looks so pretty with them on it!
PAWSOME!! Mom got the December issue of her favourite magazine (Ideas) yesterday and they had an insert about a similar type of clay which we get here. They rolled out strips of red and white clay (candy stripes) and then flattened them and used cookie cutter shapes and letters to make Christmas ornaments and decorations with – mom is quite keen to try it so we’ll let you know how it goes.
Wally & Sammy (and mom)
Oooooh, that sounds so cool! I can’t wait to see what your Mommy makes! I just LOVE crafty people! 🙂
Great article. We had a resident in our nursing home who was blind and made the most amazing sculptures with sculpey clay. He was kind of like the Grandma Moses of sculpting. Wonderful stuff.
Now that is amazing! I could not even imagine making something without seeing it, and the person you are talking about is blind. WOW! The Sculpey Clay is awesome and I just started using it, and I can’t wait to make more things now! I am hooked!
Wow! They are so cute! I’ve heard of Sculpy, but never used it. I ordered it for my classroom when I was a teacher, but they cut it from my order. Ditto the watercolor paper I wanted that year….. I’m looking forward to seeing what you create for Christmas.
I am hoping to try making a textured little bowl! I love this Sculpey Clay so much and it is really easy to work with and sculpt. What is watercolor paper? I need to get some more different colors of acrylic paint so I can paint these clay pieces too.
Watercolor paper is shiny and glossy – really fun to paint on because you can wet the paper as much as you want and the colors stay bright and don’t soak in.
WOW, now that sounds like something that I would love to play with! I have always wanted to paint something on a huge canvas to see how creative I can get, but just never got around to it. Perhaps a good project for me for next year! 🙂