Using Alcohol With Polymer Clay
Rubbing Alcohol is a great tool that is used to help smooth and blend polymer clay when sculpting. Like the Vaseline tutorial, I have several other tutorials where I give examples on how I use alcohol while sculpting (I’ve included a few examples at the bottom of this page). When I first started sculpting I used water based clay (I had never even heard of polymer clay at that time). With the water based clay I was able to achieve a smoothing and blending effect by using a wet sponge or Q-tip. However, when I started using polymer clays, water did not have the same effect. At first I tried to use water and Q-tip on my polymer clay but the results were pretty poor. After doing a lot of research on the internet I discovered that rubbing alcohol dissolves polymer clays. Thanks to other polymer clay artist I was able to learn that alcohol on a Q-tip, sponge or paint brush has the same effect as water on water based clay. I have experimented with different potencies of rubbing alcohol and found that not all are created equal.