| General info about our products - FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions | |
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1. How do you use polymer clay? Simplistically speaking, you take it out of the package, knead it, manipulate it into the shape you want and then you cure it in your home oven at low temperatures so that it will harden permanently. Cured objects can then be further manipulated - drilled, sanded, buffed, painted, glazed, antiqued, etc. Polymer clay has so many applications and uses - jewelry, home decor, dollmaking, miniature making, sculpting... and there are thousands of techniques for getting different effects. There are 80-some-odd books, dozens of videos and hundreds of web sites about what you can do with polymer clay, so I will not attempt to even summarize in this small a space. In our opinion, the best online source of information about how people have experimented with it is Diane Black's polymer clay "encyclopedia," the Glass Attic, a huge compilation of posts to usenet, mailing lists and bulletin boards, organized by subject matter. No kidding, it could take you days to read it all. :)
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2. My pasta machine is leaving black streaks! I've had this problem, too - not with every machine and for varying lengths of time. It eventually does go away on all machines. Because the streaking happens more with some brands of clay than with others, the manufacturer has speculated that something in the clay is causing a chemical reaction with the stainless steel rollers. A customer recently told us of her own speculation that the dark streaks are actually minute metal filings from the scraper bars beneath the rollers. She tested this by holding a cloth against the moving rollers and then using a magnet to pull metal filings from the fabric. She further tested by removing the scraper bars from her machine - the streaks are eliminated. So she now uses one machine without scraper bars for light colors and translucent clays and a machine with scraper bars for colors of clay that won't show the streaking. There is some general information about the care and feeding of pasta machines on our Bulletin Board.
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3. There are so many brands and types of inks - which kinds should I get? Many inks will be compatible with polymer clay, though some will require heat-setting, embossing or sealing to make them permanent on a polymer surface. There is an article that compares most of the brands that PCE carries on our Bulletin Board, if you're interested.
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4. Do you have a wholesale price list? Our prices are already below retail, so for most items we don't have a wholesale price structure. We do offer discounts for orders over $400. We also offer wholesale prices for TheArtWay video series that we produce and for Cernit, Plus, Formo, Flumo, Premier and LaDoll, for which we are the direct importer and distributor.
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5. Can you send me a catalog? We do not have a print catalog, and due to the rate at which we add new products to our line, a print catalog isn't feasible at this time. We do have a printable price list available in a variety of formats.
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6. Do you ever have classes? Yes, we provide a completely furnished and equipped studio space for teachers to hold their workshops and small classes. Please contact us for more information about class schedules and space availability. Please check out our class schedule here.
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Polymer Clay Express at TheArtWay Store
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ArtWay 2008