Benefits of Crafting With Oven Baked Clay

As you explore your many options for an artistic hobby, one that you should mull over for a bit is working with clay, specifically oven baked clay. It is a simple, highly versatile medium that gives you a lot of room to play with. In case you are unfamiliar with oven baked clay, also known as polymer clay, we want to list out some of the major benefits of practicing with this material as a creative hobby.

Easy to Get Started
If we had to guess what one of the most common reasons for getting started with polymer clay was, we would wager that accessibility was high up there. Polymer clay is super accessible to people of all ages and levels of experience in modeling clay. It is both beginner and professional friendly and we recommend anyone to try it out for themselves. For starters, oven baked clay, as the name implies, can be set in an oven. Not a kiln, but an ordinary kitchen oven. You do not have to find a local workshop in order to start working with polymer clay like you might have to with oil based clay. You can get started using what you already have. The materials are relatively affordable and easy to find. We have a vast selection of colors here at FireFly Art Supplies, as well as a helpful collection of clay tools that you can use to create your projects. Working with the clay itself is mostly intuitive and you can get the hang of things pretty quickly on your own or with tutorials online for guidance.

Make Your Own Jewelry
Polymer clay makes the perfect material for creating your own custom jewelry. You can use it to make anything from earrings and necklaces to bracelets and brooches. Just pick up some jewelry components like earring hooks and you can create jewelry made just for your tastes. Once you get a feel for the materials, you can make your oven baked clay jewelry look like high-end pieces. It is a fun, rewarding experience getting to wear the art you made yourself.

Let Out Your Creativity
With all of the stress and tedious tasks you have to deal with in a single day, it is important that you take some time for yourself when you need to and let your mind go free. We can become so fixated on individual tasks for work and personal errands that we tire ourselves out mentally and don't allow ourselves to think more creatively, even if it is not for anything related to work. In order to get that creativity injected into your day, you can pick up a creative hobby that allows you to think freely and let your imagination take over. This is really helpful if you have a job that does not allow you to think creatively very much. Everyone benefits from taking part in some form of artistry even if we do not see ourselves as artists necessarily. It is healthy for the mind to think more creatively and process inspiration from time to time so that we can let out our thoughts and not get so wrapped up in methodical ways of thinking.

Getting involved in a creative project is a good opportunity to relax and have some fun in a non-competitive form of artistry. There are no rules to creativity and no one will be there to judge your final product. All that matters is that you enjoy yourself and you like creating your personal projects. Oven baked clay fits right into that vision because it is such a versatile medium.

You can do just about anything you want with it and make the ideas you have in your mind come to life. You can sculpt, pull, twist, roll, cut, and bend your clay all you want to make it resemble anything you have in mind. The fact that it is so hands-on also helps with the experience because you are able to really dig your hands into the material and feel like you are making something, which is a different feeling from creating art indirectly like with digital media. Polymer clay is a great material to work with if you want to have creative personal projects that allow you to have fun without any pressure.

Create Handmade Gifts
We have all heard before that, when it comes to gift giving, it is the thought that counts. This expression is meant to assure people that a gift at any price point can be warmly-received and appreciated, it just comes down to the idea behind the gift. Buying a gift off the store shelf at the last minute does not usually yield the same effect as creating a gift by hand.

If you are looking for a gift for someone for the holidays or perhaps a birthday, you might be excited to make them something special using your newly developed skills. You can use oven baked clay to create anything at all that you think your loved one will appreciate and enjoy having. It could be polymer clay jewelry, little figurines of their favorite characters, home decorations, keychains, etc. It is all up to you to decide what they might like.

Doing this allows you to create a customized gift for your loved one that feels highly personal. They will be touched knowing that you went through the effort of making them something by hand and appreciate the item that was made just for them with even more sentimental value than something from a store. Creating presents by hand is a good option to have, and it is one you can rely on when you learn how to create different things with oven baked clay.

Polymer clay definitely has its advantages, and we have only scratched the surface of everything this medium can offer. Take a look at the assortment of colors for polymer clay we have at FireFly Art Supplies and pick out your favorites to see what you can make with them. There is so much you can do with this material, all you have to do now is to get started.