Comparing Polymer Clay and Cold Porcelain

DottedKitten has created a video showing us the differences she found between polymer clay and no-bake cold porcelain.   This question comes up often, so I hope you enjoy the video.   Thanks DottedKitten!

Make a Cute Reindeer

Today we have a video demo showing you how to create a cute little reindeer with polymer clay.  But this blog is suppose to be about air-dry clay, right?   It is.   This demo is a good one to use as an example of how to modify a polymer clay tutorial when using air dry clay.   The types of air-dry clays that work best for this sort of project are the soft, pre-colored clays such as Makin's Clay, Hearty Clay,

How to make a Petey Penguin Figurine

Today I'm breaking my own rule of only featuring tutorials that use air-dry clay because I wanted to share this polymer clay tutorial with you.   These penguins are so darn cute and the process to make them with air-dry clay would be essentially the same as shown in this video....just don't bake it!   ;-)

Deb from DebandCo.com shares with the viewers, step by step, how to make one of her famous Petey Penguin Figurines. Petey Penguin was inspired by the movie Happy Feet.

What is air-dry clay and how is it different from polymer clay?

by Mary in Oregon

Let me start by saying there's a huge variety of no-bake, air-dry, self-hardening clays!  Because of this variety, making a generalized comparison to polymer clay is difficult.

There are basically 3 types of clays for the home hobbyist... oven-cured, self-hardening and non-curing.... BUT..... the clays could also be grouped as oil-based, wax-based, resin-based, water-based, stone and cellulose-based.* (see Wikipedia definitions for more detail)    Polymer clays are not actually "clay" and must be heated to cure.  Although there are some air-dry & self-hardening clays containing polymers they are usually not referred to as "polymer" clay.  Oil and wax-based clays are the Plasticine clays often used to create clay animations.  This type of clay stays flexible (re-positionable) and it never hardens.  If heated, it will melt.