As you know Kira and I just got back from the CHA show in Chicago, well the airlines broke my microphone headset which I use for the podcast. I am going to town to see if I can find another one today. We were thinking if I can’t find one that we would release part 1 of the Bottles of Hope award ceremony on Polymer Clay TV early since it is edited and ready to go. Wish me luck today because if I find a headset we will probably be releasing both shows on Friday as a bonus and you will get to see some of the Amaco awards ceremony. We had to break the awards ceremony into parts because of the length and bandwith issues so make sure not to miss any of it.

We received a phone call from Rita yesterday wanting to know more about the new clay Polyform is making called, Studio By Sculpey. What I can tell you is that I really liked it for caning and it kneaded really easily, in fact it took just seconds and was just a matter of squeezing it in my hands and shaping it. There was no cracking or crumbling. The color palette was made with large scale home decor in mind. Most of the colors are muted tones for the home but there was a bright purple color mixed in. It feels almost chalky or powdery and not sticky at all. I haven’t done much with it except make a cane. When Donna Dewberry was demonstrating the clay one of the points she made is that you can make a flower and it won’t lose its shape. In other words you don’t have to use an armature to hold the shape of a bead or something as the clay doesn’t move like Premo or other brands. The petals stayed where they were put and did not droop. I can see the potential of the clay and want to get my hands on some other colors. We received a call yesterday from Polyform and they mentioned they had some projects & photos they might be able to send us. I will try to call them on my way to town today and let you know what else I find out about the clay. There were also mock up cards of the 40 new tools they plan to launch with the clay. There were no samples so I can’t say how they will work but they did look interesting. I am a tool- a- holic and am always looking for new things to play with.

Makins Clay had some really cool tools as well. Kira & my favorite would have to be the extruder that has a sort of crank handle and is made out of metal. It worked great and we will probably be demoing it on a future episode. Scott Mizevitz was also using it in his demo at the Amaco booth so it seems to work great with all the polymer clay brands. Makins also had an extruder that will make a hole and extrude a sort of tube that you could use to make beads. Very interesting…

Linda Peterson was demoing a really cool technique in the Amaco booth, where she took clay and gold or silver leaf and made beads and then covered the beads with dye ink and then sealed it with UTEE. They were beautiful! Kira and my only concern is that we both live in Florida and that if we use the UTEE that it might melt. If anyone has had any experience with this, please let us know. We will keep you posted about this weeks show. Hope everyone has a creative day!