How To Prevent Your Cold Porcelain Clay From Cracking

Here are a few tips on how to prevent your cold porcelain clay from cracking.  Cold Porcelain Clay is fairly easy to work with. However, There are some steps you need to take to prevent or minimize cracking. First lets talk about what causes cold porcelain clay to crack.  
In some ways, Cold Porcelain Clay is similar to polymer clay such as Sculpey or Fimo. If you remove polymer clay from it’s packaging and don’t condition it, your clay will crack and easily break apart after baking. With Cold Porcelain clay, you need to properly condition your clay before letting it air dry or it may crack. Sometimes I get questions from customers who say their clay keeps cracking and they don’t know why. Well i use the same clay for my creations and my clay never cracks- ever. I the assumed they must be doing something wrong. Here are some rules for your clay:

• First, Always condition your clay- Conditioning your clay means to work the clay with your hands. Doing this will warm up the clay and get it ready for sculpting and it also help get rid of air bubbles. Air bubbles causes cracking.
• Do not try to speed up the drying process- Cold Porcelain clay dries from the outside in. So this means the outside dries first. If you rush the drying process and the outside dries faster than the inside the clay inside will expand and create cracking. Do not blow dry your clay with a hair dryer, do not leave near cold air, open window, or draft and do not place pieces in front of a fan. 
• Do not condition your clay with water. You can condition your clay by hand but if you need for your clay to be more smooth and pliable it’s best to do so with clay conditioning lotion (sold by Stacie Laurell Crafts).  You can use water to help join pieces together but do not use water to condition your clay because the water will create cracks.
• Leave your clay to dry- Do not handle your clay and bother it while it is drying. Let your piece dry on it’s own and in it’s own time.

These are sure ways to prevent cracking. Also know that if you clay does crack you can fix it by adding some clay to the cracked areas and letting it dry then sanding it down. Cracks in your clay are easy to fix but if you don’t want to deal with cracking at all it’s best you follow these tips! 

Happy Crafting 
Stacie Laurell Crafts