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Using Vaseline With Polymer Clay

I’ve already covered the use of Vaseline in a few of my tutorials but though I should also do a little write up on it under the tools section of this site.  Vaseline, or Petroleum Jelly, is used to help non-baked clay, which I will refer to as new clay in this article, stick to baked clay.  One of the benefits of working with polymer clay is that you can bake the sculpture multiple times during the sculpting process.  This key advantage allows you to bake the sculpture in stages verses having to sculpt the entire piece before baking. 

Some of you may be wondering why anyone would care to bake a sculpture multiple times.  The key advantage of being able to bake the sculpture multiple times is that you can work on the details on one area of the sculpture and then bake it to preserve your hard work.  Nothing is more frustrating then spending a lot of time working on detailing part of a sculpture only to accidentally grab it with your hand and undo all of your hard work.  I’ve done this many times myself.  I have spent hours detailing an arm or face only to accidentally grab it and squish some of the details.  See my partial baking article for an example on how I bake a sculpture in stages.

Here are the quick and easy steps for using Vaseline on a sculpture

1.  First step is to select a paint brush for applying the Vaseline.  Use this paintbrush for only applying Vaseline.

2.  Lightly apply the Vaseline to the baked sculpture 3.  With a tissue remove the excess Vaseline (it doesn’t take much for the new clay to stick to the baked clay)

4.  Apply a thin layer of clay to the surface of the baked clay.

If you would like a visual on how to use Vaseline on baked clay then check out one of my previous tutorials here.  The pictures in the tutorial walk you through the steps I use to add new clay to baked clay.  It’s an easy process and one that will save you hours of frustration.

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