First time with Poly Clay

Okay, so I just wanted to share my first experience with heating polymer clay. I will let the pics speak for themselves!!!

Nice huh? My first time and this one above turned out so well. I cannot believe how well I did. I must be a natural polymer clay artist now!!

Just look at that color and the perfect definition of a key. 

Okay, seriously this one above is keep-able right? LOL!

Such nice bubbling action going on above! Ok, ok, so I burnt the heck out of them! Yep, my "craft room" went up in smoke....nice lung-warming carcinogenic smoke! Yawl should have seen me herding my kids upstairs and opening up all the doors, grabbing the closest towel to me and fanning the air. Not sure what happened...actually that is a lie. I thought all the things that I was doing wrong as I was doing them. Okay, mind you I have been thinking this process over in my head for years. I have read and watched youtube videos about it, I just never tried it before. Well, my memory was slitely rusty on the subject, but I got the motivation and urge to "just do it" Nike style right? Wrong!! I'm still alive and have learned. Anyways, some of the things I remember thinking while I was placing the pieces (they are key molds by the way) in the small toaster oven (yes, toaster oven), I thought...."hmm they seem so close to the top burners." Did I do anything about that nope, just kept on placing them in there. I turn it to 350 degrees Fahrenheit....I think (yea I went to public school). For some reason, I just knew that was the right temperature. No I don't have the bags to check...not that I would have anyways. And ends up that was way too hot. They should be like 260 degrees, depending on the brand of clay. But, the great thing about being an idiot and making a huge mistake is you learn and the things you learn will stick with you for a really long time...maybe your whole life. So, I learned the hard way to really research the process again before actually trying it, even if you've studied it off and on for years. Also, that even though they almost caught fire after like 5 minutes, they still came out hard...like it really worked. They are not clay anymore, so that was a really positive feeling for me, since I have only felt one other home-hardened polymer clay piece before. I felt like, "I did it!" even though, I will trash most of them. I am going to test the two that came out "ok", to see if they make nice keys for some of my projects.