We Interrupt Your Program....

Fellow polymer clay artists, you know the problem:  you try to buy the softest clay you can find (yes, we all squeeze the packages in the store), and hope that it will be easy to condition by hand.  Because I am using large quantities to create my 6"x6" tiles, I purchase my favorite Sculpey Firm in one pound boxes online (much cheaper than in stores, even with shipping added).  The boxes contain extruded strips of clay which are usually quite hard.  Having to manually soften and knead them into workable flat shapes to put through my electric pasta machine was very labor intensive and often painful to my already painful shoulder (bone spur=ouch!).  After hearing me complain and talk about the pain one too many times, Stan went online to search for a solution.  And he found a great one:

The "NEVERknead" (NK) is a machine which takes the shoulder, arm, and hand work out of kneading all types of polymer clay.  It was invented by a woman who had the same issues when attempting to condition hard clay, and she owns the company which produces the product (very cool).  The NK comes in 6 colors, and of course I got the purple.  It was easy to assemble (despite the heavy cast iron), easy to use, and it works; using 1,000 pounds of pressure to whip the clay into submission!  Even hard, crumbly, 'I-have-to-throw-this-out' clay can be transformed into workable, conditioned clay in minutes (yes, I realize I sound like a commercial, but it's really true).  There are videos on the website which show the use of liquid clay conditioner on crumbly bits, but I haven't had to use any for mine.  

So, call before midnight tonight, operators are standing by for your....no, I'm not a spokesperson for the NEVERknead, but I thought you should know about it--I'm certainly glad I do!

And now, back to your regularly scheduled program, already in progress... 

Until next time,