Here we are, my nice clean uncluttered polymer clay work station.  


I did the calibration experiments, rolling out the pasta, oops, I mean clay, to a sheet on settings 1-6, cut and made a stack 10 sheets thick, measured the height, divided by 10 to get the thickness of sheet made by each roller setting on the clay conditioning machine.

Interested?  Here are the results
Setting 1 = 2.4 mm
Setting 2 = 2.2 mm
Setting 3 = 1.9 mm 
Setting 4 = 1.5 mm
Setting 5 = 1.0 mm
Setting 6 = 0.5 mm 
and the last setting was too thin to measure, the clay get tearing as soon as I touched it.

Obviously far too thin to work with.

I thought it was a good exercise to get started with polymer clay, I was getting a good feel for handling it, and could tell when it was conditioned.  It did mean putting lots of layers on top of each other and then re-rolling everything.  Hmm.  I noticed quite a few air-bubbles.  I had a go at cutting them open with a blade, and then squishing the clay together again along the cut.  That worked well, but of course I was just playing with one colour.  If it had been patterned, my air-bubble slicings would have been noticeable I suspect.  Note to self: avoid treating clay like plasticine.  Not putting bubbles in to start with is important!

I picked my least favourite colour of Premo Sculpey to play with (the one I did the calibrations with) and decided to try a Mobius bead (see Jewellery Maker http://www.jewellerymaker.com/en-gb/how-to/create-a-polymer-mobius-bead.aspx)

My second attempt came out like this.  The first one was too small and thin to hold its shape. This one was from a square about 1" and about 2 mm thick.  To stop it collapsing when I made the second pinch, I stuck a tool handle (a thin rod in other words) in the first hole as I formed the bead shape.  It needed a bit of gentle encouragement to form a fairly symmetric shape.  I feel I could do that now with a black and white jelly roll, which would show the Mobius bead shape off beautifully.  But I've never made a jellyroll yet.

Thinks: Why did I start with something labelled "Intermediate"?

Well, I am getting round to it... husband agreed to retasking the old pasta machine into a clay conditioning machine.  Hadn't used it for years, assumed it had been put away clean.  Eeeugh!  Loads of dried pasta crud!  Amazingly, paper towel and meths did a quick job of it and it is sparkling.  (Should have taken a before and after pic)

Now to calibrate the machine.  It's a WL machine, and looking at the bottom of the box it came in, (yes, it was still in its box) WL stands for William Levene.  It's got 7 settings, 1 will make the  thickest sheet, I can see the rollers are furthest apart on that setting.

Gotta start somewhere

It's a new year... that polymer clay stuff has been sitting in my drawer for a while.  I really must stop admiring it and actually open the packet.  Instead of enjoying the idea of playing with clay, I'm going to do it.  I've set up my pinterest page and done lots of research on techniques. No more researching until I've actually done some hands on.  Husband says I can appropriate the pasta machine.

I've drawn up a list of what to do first.  Shall I?  Shall I?

TBC!