Liquid polymer clay is a new material to me. So I decided to research and write about everything I’ve found and do my own experiments, so you can find all the information you need, on the one page.
The first question to answer is what is liquid polymer clay? Well, the clue is in the name, it’s polymer clay in liquid form. It has a similar consistency to thin PVA glue and has a slightly sticky texture. Like all polymer clay, it needs to be baked to harden.
How Do You Use Liquid Polymer Clay?
Liquid polymer clay is extremely versatile and can be used in a number of different ways:
- To make models by pouring it in moulds.
- To soften polymer clay that’s become too hard to work with.
- To bond together pieces of clay, or to bond clay with other materials such as wood, glass and metal.
- To decorate regular polymer clay, such as adding designs to jewellery or adding sauces or icing to polymer clay food miniatures. You can either buy coloured liquid polymer clay or add your own colour to the product – more on this below!
- To glaze a polymer clay model.
- To fix baked polymer clay models that have been broken.
This is by no means an exhaustive list and in the video below, Sculpey demonstrate just a couple of the ways you can use this genius product:
What Polymer Clay Brands Are Available?
Below is an overview of the polymer clay brands that are available and the differences between them.
| Brand | Approx. Cost | Finish post-baking | Clarity post-baking | Colours Available |
| Translucent Liquid Sculpey (TLS) | £10 for 59ml | Matt | Slightly milky | Translucent and sculpey does do a range of coloured liquid clay in various colours including metallics and primary colours. |
| Kato Liquid Polyclay | £15 for 236 ml | Shiny | Almost clear | Black, blue, green, orange, red, white, yellow and translucent. |
| Fimo Liquid Gel | £10 for 50ml | Shiny | Almost clear (the clearest of all brands) | Black, gold, silver, translucent. |
There is a fourth product which some crafters refer to as a liquid clay, but it’s actually a glue. Sculpey Bake and Bond is thicker than liquid polymer clay and is made to be used as a glue for attaching clay together. Being thicker, it’s easier to use to attach pieces of polymer clay together than using liquid polymer clay.
You can use Bake and Bond when making miniatures with liquid polymer clay – it’s fine to mix it with oil paints to create icing for example.
In the video below you can see how different types of liquid polymer clay can be coloured in different ways:
Where To Buy Liquid Polymer Clay
Kato Liquid Polyclay is a USA brand and is hard to come by, I could only find Clayaround selling it in the UK. It is available from a few sellers on Etsy, but the postage costs are more expensive than the product as it’s shipped from either Australia or America. Clayaround is also the only place in the UK I could find that stocks Kato coloured clay.
The other brands are readily available from places like Amazon and craft specialists like Hobbycraft.
Coloured Liquid Sculpey is available in the UK but it took me a while to find any shops that sell it, and those that do, don’t have a huge range of colours. Craft Cellar sell a couple of Metallic Coloured Liquid Sculpey colours. Perles & Co sell the Glam Metallics and Primary ranges – they’re a French company which ship all over the world and from what I could see, the postage was pretty reasonable. And that was about it for buying Coloured Liquid Sculpey!
How Do You Apply Liquid Polymer Clay?
When making miniatures, I’ve found a toothpick or a small metal or plastic pointed tool is the best way to apply it. You can use a brush, but as it’s a plastic clay, you’ll have to wash the brush extremely well to prevent the polymer from sticking the bristles together.
In many cases, you’ll squirt some liquid clay into a container, mix it with colour, and apply from there, rather than applying the clay directly to the model.
If you put too much clay on at any point, just dip a cotton pad into a little rubbing alcohol to remove the excess clay.
TOP TIP: Don’t shake liquid polymer clay before you use it as this creates air bubbles. In one of my first attempts with the material I shook the bottle and squeezed the liquid straight into a mould and this happened – ultra bubbly miniature knife and spoon (the fork broke completely!).
How Do You Bake Liquid Polymer Clay?
In the same way as regular polymer clay! Always follow the instructions on the packet and bake the clay for at least 30 mins. For Liquid Sculpey, it’s recommended to have the oven at 130° for 15 minutes if your model is less than 1/4 inch small. There’s no harm in baking it for longer though, provided your oven is at the correct temperature.
Apparently, if you bake liquid polymer clay at a high temperature (around 140° or more) it is clearer once it’s cured. However, this does mean risking scorching the non-liquid polymer clay you’ll probably be baking it with. Do your own experiments with scrap clay before committing to using this technique to bake a miniature model.
You can find out more about baking miniature polymer clay models here.
How Do You Colour Liquid Polymer Clay?
As you’ll only be using a little bit of liquid polymer clay at a time, it’s best to buy translucent liquid clay and colour it as you need it. Although pre-coloured liquid polymer clay is available, the colours are limited and it’ll work out more expensive than colouring your own if you’re only using a small amount.
There are various materials you can add to translucent liquid clay to colour it, including:
- chalk pastels
- alcohol-based inks
- oil paints
- oil pastels (I tried this technique myself and you can see the dodgy results below!)
- spices (some crafters swear by colouring liquid clay with spices but I can’t image there’d be much colour variety doing this!)
- Mica powder and pigment powders – mica is a sparkly powder and pigment powder is matte. There’s a great article explaining the difference between the two here.
- Make-up – I’ve used powder eye shadow to colour clay and it works great, probably because it’s made of mica!
- Fabric dyes
- Food colouring
You should avoid water-based paint as this can lead to bubbling or cracking – polymer clay is made of oil and oil and water don’t mix!
From the research I’ve done, the vast majority of modellers seem to use chalk pastels to colour their clay. The great thing about using chalk pastels is that you can mix the colours together to create the exact shade you need for your model.
When choosing which type of chalk pastels to buy, the artist grade ones tend to have more pigment than the student grades ones, so you can use less chalk to get the shade you want.
This video explains the difference between the different types of chalk pastels available and how to use them with polymer clay:
The video below gives a really clear explanation of how to mix different colours together to create new shades:
When it comes to mixing liquid polymer clay with the chalk it’s as simple as shaving tiny fragments of chalk pastel into the clay with an X-Acto knife. If you’re only use a small bit of clay, you can do this on a glass work surface. Alternatively, if you want to create enough coloured clay to use in future – you can mix it in a small, sealable pot.
Depending on what you’re making, you could also mix the colours into the clay in the model itself. Check out how the crafter below colours liquid polymer clay with chalk pastels in miniature coffee and tea cups.
As well as mixing chalk pastel into liquid polymer clay, use can also apply it to the surface of polymer clay using a brush.
Skip to 1:40 in the video below to see how the crafter creates grill marks on teeny sausages using dark brown pastel. Skip to 3:05 to see how she also uses chalk pastel mixed with liquid polymer clay to create mustard and ketchup.
How Do You Store Liquid Polymer Clay?
Liquid polymer clay won’t cure unless you bake it. Just like regular polymer clay, liquid clay will last for years provided you store it away from heat and direct sunlight.
If you’re only using a little bit at a time, then you won’t need to worry about storage as the liquid clay can just stay in the bottle. If you’re mixing larger amounts of clay with colours then you can store these in a range of containers:
- small takeaway pots
- used paint pots (the type used in kids painting sets where lots of different pots are attached together)
- baby food jars
- small jam or pickle jars
If you use a plastic container, just make sure it’s safe to use with polymer clay, as some plastic can react to clay and the clay will rot it. I’ve done a whole blog post about storing polymer clay correctly that you can read here.
And if you store your liquid clay in something that was used to contain food – make sure you clearly label it!
How Do You Use Liquid Polymer Clay To Make Miniatures?
The main way liquid polymer clay is used in miniatures is to make liquids (surprise!) for miniature food modelling. It’s not used so much for things like water in miniature gardens, as none of the brands bake completely clear.
The techniques for using liquid polymer clay for miniatures are very similar, no matter what miniature food you’re making.
It usually involves mixing a small amount of liquid clay with shavings from soft pastels to colour it. It can them be used for sauces, icing, drinks, soups, jelly and any other food that has a liquid in it.
As the scale you’re working to is so small, the best way to apply the liquid clay is with a toothpick, a needle or a metal or plastic fine tipped tool.
One main exception to this is making frosting for cupcakes and donuts. The favoured technique to do this is to create a thicker liquid clay by mixing solid polymer clay with liquid polymer clay and baby oil or clay softener. This creates a consistency very similar to real butter icing (also known as frosting).
As you’ll see in the video below, it takes a lot of mixing and a lot of experimenting to gain the right consistency.
Liquid polymer clay can also be used for things such as strengthening handles on miniature crockery, attaching straws to mini drinks or attaching polymer clay lolly sticks to lollies.
How Not To Use Liquid Polymer Clay When Making Miniatures
My first foray into using liquid polymer clay for miniature food went very wrong.
I mixed the clay with shavings from oil pastels rather than chalk pastels. Because of the oily texture of the pastels, it was very hard to get ultra small particles of colour, and even after lots and lots of stirring, it still had big chunks of oil pastel in it.
Apparently, you can use oil pastels, but unless you want to spend two hours mixing, I’m not sure how good an idea this is.
I intended the coloured clay to be used in a tea tiny tea cup that my daughter made.
I added more oil pastel but it was never going to work for a cup of tea so I had the not-so great idea of adding paint to make the liquid clay darker.
As you can see below, it looked OK being topped with mini marshmallows before being baked… But after baking it bizarrely rose like a tiny chocolate cup cake! I have no idea how or why this happened but as I continue experimenting I shall no doubt find out more!
My best guess is that the paint I used was water-based and it therefore created air bubbles that caused the liquid clay to ‘rise’.
5 of The Best Miniature Food Tutorials Using Liquid Polymer Clay
This was the most fun part of writing this post – I loved seeing the cute and creative ways other modellers use liquid clay to create miniatures. These are my favourite but there are hundreds out there to watch.
Miniature Ramen Bowel
Here, the crafter mixes sienna and ocher coloured chalk pastels into liquid polymer clay to make a delicious looking broth.
Miniature Lemon Cake
It’s my favourite cake to eat so I couldn’t miss this one off the list! This video is great as it includes tips for using chalk pastels to add colour to the outside of the cake and how to apply polymer clay frosting. It also links to a vide on how to make super cute miniature lemon canes slices.
Miniature Pumpkin Soup
I love SweetMiniDollHouse! The detail she achieves is insane – her work is ultra realistic and many of her tutorials are on a 1:12 scale which is great to know as not many modellers seems to share the scale they’re working to.
Miniature Bubble Tea
I included this tutorial as the crafter used liquid polymer clay to form the drink and the cup by pouring liquid clay into mould. She also used liquid polymer clay to attach the lid to cup.
Miniature French Fries And Ketchup
I’m cheating slightly as in this tutorial the crafter uses resin to make the ketchup, rather than liquid polymer clay. But I included it as there’s no reason you couldn’t use liquid clay instead of resin and I loved her techniques for making such a cute miniature bowl for the ketchup.