Polymer Clay Work – Using 7 Year Old Polymer Clay Veneers

Hi all,

I’ve been working with veneers again today, creating some special pieces for a couple of art prizes so of course, can’t show you any pics.  I can however show you some veneers I created 7 years ago when I was in Colorado in the studio of Donna Kato (all thanks to my beautiful friend Rachel McKenzie).  Donna shared her technique for silkscreening onto polymer clay and wow, I loved it straight away.  Yes, you heard it right…these veneers are 7 years old!!  We used black Kato clay and acrylic paint.  I created a few simple pieces with these veneers straight away but the leftovers (the bits you see in the pics) travelled all the way back to Geraldton with me.  I’ve kept them in the paper Donna gave me and when I got back home, popped them into a plastic container and this is where they’ve stayed ever since.

So I wondered if the clay was still usable and decided to create a little bead with a portion of the scraps…and wow, perfect.  The clay was soft and I found no cracking when creating this bead at all.  Before using I popped the veneer in between two layers of multix-bake paper and roller over with a brayer just to warm it up a little.  It was unbelievable.  In fact I’ve never really had any problems with any of my veneers when going to use them again.  Some may crack slightly but the majority work incredibly well with just a little bit of warming.  So in my experience, you can keep your decorated veneers for a substantial amount of time without the clay being affected.  Remember this is Kato clay so there could be a difference with Premo, Fimo or any of the other brands.

This is the paper that the veneers were put into.  I think it may be parchment paper that Donna gave me but please correct me if I’m wrong.  It is one sheet and has serrations on either end and came already folded in half (I think – gosh it’s so long ago now).

This is my stash of veneers stacked onto multix-bake paper.  When I’ve finished using them they’ll go on top of each other into the plastic containers ready for next time.

Hope you all had a great day.  See you next week.

Love Deb

Debbie Crothers

I love working with polymer clay and I love to teach others my techniques for working with polymer clay. Thank you for stopping in to read my blog - I hope you have found the information valuable. Be sure to join my Newsletter to receive regular updates directly to your inbox!