Gluesticks

I need help with a problem involving hot glue and super sculpey polymer clay?

I have created a generic ornament piece using sculpey. I created this piece and then made a 2-piece mold of it using silicone caulk like you buy at walmart. Next, I injected hot melt glue into the silicone mold, put the mold together and out came my solid, hot melt piece i needed. Ok, great. NOW, here is the part i need help with. I want to sculpt new details onto this hot melt casting using super sculpey. It sculpts onto the stuff great. The only problem is that when i put the piece into my makeshift oven (cardboard box covered on the inside with tin foil with a hair dryer fed into the side), the sculpey cures, BUT the hot melt glue melts. The curing temp of sculpey is 275 degrees F. Hot melt glue is only like 135 deg. F. So, therein lies the problem. Can anyone think of a solution for my problem? I've thought about using air-drying clay, but i bought some today and it sucks bad. Well, it is the crayola brand stuff so i wasnt expecting much. Are there any decent air drying polymer clays out there that are about like super sculpey? I need fine details. Please help! Thanks!

Public Comments

1. The thing with hot glue is that it melts when heated. Leaving it in the sun even on a mild day can cause it melt. Unless you want to store your finished item in the freezer, I would recommend using something else for your casting. Perhaps plaster? If you make a mould that you can bake, you could use liquid sculpey/fimo. Then you fill your mould with the liquid, bake it, crack the mould off, add any extra details you want in sculpey and re-bake it. You won't find an air-drying clay as good as super sculpey. By its nature air-drying clay tends to crack as it dries. You could try asking at your local craft shop for a good air-drying clay, but I doubt you will be pleased with the finished result of even the best clay.
2. The only way you're going to be able to add things to "hot glue" after it's extruded and cooled would be to bake any polymer clay bits you want, then glue them onto the hot glue cast. As you found out, the temp required to cure polymer clay is too hot for hot glue. You can however create a polymer clay piece in a mold (in various ways), then add more polymer clay to it (after baking or before), or you can "distort" the molded clay while it's still raw to change the basic shape. You can also use an air-dry clay** underneath a layer of polymer clay as long as the air-dry clay is totally dry first (or you could use prebaked polymer clay in the same way)... those would be used as "armatures" under the final outer bit of polymer clay. **there are various types, brands, and qualities of air-dry clays, and some get better detail or crack less during drying (always dry slowly) than others... Crayola puts out more than one "clay" so don't know which you used; the "Crayola Air Dry Clay" would be much better quality than their Model Magic clays Other air-dry clays which would get good detail would be: Creative Paperclay, Makins or Hearty if you want pre-colored air-dry clays, or homemade bread clay or even salt dough clay: http://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+make+bread+clay http://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+make+salt+dough Btw, the brand and line of polymer clay called SuperSculpey is weaker than most other brands/lines of polymer clay after baking in any thin or projecting areas it has... it's also softer when raw so gets less good detail and more distortion than other brands (for example, Kato Polyclay, FimoClassic, SuperSculpey-Firm, Premo, Cernit, and FimoSoft --pretty much in that order). Sculpey III is about the same as SuperSculpey-flesh, but original plain Sculpey is even worse. There are ways to cool the clay and your hands while sculpting though which can help, or you can mix one of the softer polymer clays with one of the firmer ones. Check out some of these pages at my polymer clay "encylclopedia" site for loads more info on all those topics. That's easiest from the Table of Contents page: http://glassattic.com/polymer/contents.htm ...scroll all the way down to see what's at the whole site ...when you find a page you want to go to for lessons, examples, tips, etc, click on that page's name from inside the alphabetical navigation bar on the left Here are some of the pages you might be most interested in: Sculpting-General Characteristics of Clays Conditioning >Cooling Clay Molds Armatures-permanent HTH, Diane B.