This is the ultimate questions when it comes to making miniatures out of polymer clay. I bought multiple packs of clay from different brands to see which actually is the best for making miniatures.
If you want the super quick answer, then my favourite polymer clay for making miniature models is Sculpey Premo. It’s very firm which makes it easy to work with and it means it can hold the intricate details involved in making miniatures. Another good option is Fimo Professional, again this is a firmer clay that’s easier to handle.
If you want the longer answer and to find out how I came to this conclusion, then keep on reading!
The brands I tested to make miniature models with were:
- Fimo Professional
- Kato Polyclay
- Cernit
- Sculpey Premo
- Sculpey III
- Sculpey Souffle
- An unbranded clay from Amazon
I’m relatively new to polymer clay, so the teacups aren’t the most attractive you’ll have seen, but that’s not the point, so I hope you can forgive how they look! The point was to see which polymer clay was easiest to work with and had the best results for miniature modelling.
Bear in mind, this is only my opinion and I am new to this, so if you’re a beginner you’ll probably find this article way more useful than someone who’s a seasoned model maker.
How I Tested The Polymer Clays
What I Made
With all of the brands above, I made the same thing – a tiny teacup – and conditioned the clay in the same way, for the same amount of time before making the cups.
Where I Made Them
At my kitchen table in January in the UK – it was about -1 outside and around 20 degrees in our kitchen. I have naturally warm hands so I do feel this can sometimes be a problem working with clay as it can be tricky to keep the clay cool.
All the clay was unconditioned before I started working with it and I took it all straight out of my craft storage box in our downstairs bathroom where it’s consistency very cold!
How I Made Them
I used a kebab skewer and inserted this into a small ball of polymer clay and then moulded the clay up the side of the skewer using my fingers and a Sculpey flexible shaper. Then I added the handle and blended this to the cup.
With the Kato Polyclay, Sculpey Premo, Cernit and the generic brand, I baked the teacups still on the skewer (more on how that went later!). With the Fimo Professional, Sculpey III and Sculpey Soufflé, I made the teacups in the same way as the others, but the cups fell off the skewer as I finished moulding them, so I baked them without the skewer.
How I Baked Them
I baked them altogether in the oven for 40 minutes at 110 degrees, as this was the maximum temperature recommendation for Kato Polyclay. I baked them longer than the recommended 15-30 minutes to compensate for the fact that the majority of the brands should have been baked at a higher temperature.
Below is what I found out, starting with the good clay!
Polymer Clay For Miniature Modelling: Brands Ranks From Best To Worst
In the image below you can see the polymer clay brands ranked from best to worst (left to right) with the best being Sculpey Premo and the worst being a generic brand from Amazon.
1. Sculpey Premo
I loved the feel of Sculpey Premo as soon as I got it out of the packet. It’s firm but has a very slightly sticky feel to it when compared to the other firmer clays (Kato Polyclay and Fimo Professional) which made it easier to blend over imperfections and to attach the tiny handle.
It was very easy to mould it onto the skewer and to create a flat bottom for the teacup without breaking through the clay. I found the clay to be extremely smooth – for example, it was easy to roll the handle out without creating any seams, even at the end of the piece of clay I was rolling.
As the clay is so firm, I think a potential downside could be blending larger seams when attaching pieces of clay together, but for tiny models it’ll do just fine!
Everything felt very easy with Premo, and after the teacup was baked and cured, it had a lovely sheen to it which is ideal for a tiny teacup!
2. Fimo Professional
It was really close between Fimo Professional and Kato Polyclay for position number two, but Fimo Professional won because it was slightly easier to work with when trying to get the rim of the teacup level.
Fimo Professional maintains its firmness – even after a rolling and reshaping to get the right amount of clay for the teacup it didn’t go into a sticky soft mess like some clays do. It did feel slightly sticky but not enough to make it a problem to work with.
The stiffness of Fimo Professional will make it an excellent choice for making intricate miniatures with – something I’m definitely going to try with this clay!
The only problem I had is that, unlike the other teacups that I baked on the kebab skewer, I couldn’t get this one off the skewer once it had been cured! It took lots of poking with a needle to break the seam between the polymer clay and wood to free my tiny teacup – hence the scratch marks on the rim of the cup! So perhaps this goes to show that Fimo Professional is sticker than I thought!
3. Kato Polyclay
The most notable thing about Kato Polyclay is the smell – it smells like cheap plastic toys from the ’80s. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it was actually quite a nostalgic smell for me, but if you’re not a fan of strong smelling clay, it could be a problem.
The smell aside, this is some awesome clay. It’s firm straight out of the packet and doesn’t take much conditioning to get it to a workable texture. I used the Pearl shade which had a lovely satin sheen to it that’s perfect for a teacup. It has a waxy, rather than a sticky feel like some of the other polymer clays – I don’t mind the slight stickiness of Premo and Fimo Professional, but if you prefer a waxier clay then Kato is the best choice for you.
It did soften slightly quicker than the top two clays, which is why it’s further down the list, as I felt a bit rushed to get the teacup done before the clay got too soft to work with.
It was easy to cover seams with the blending tool. The main downside is that it was harder to make a straight bottom on the teacup as the skewer broke through the clay more easily than with the Fimo Professional and Premo.
Overall though, Kato Polyclay is a great clay for miniatures and it’s one of the hardest polymer clays when cured so it’s great for making durable miniature models. It’s harder to come by in the UK than Fimo and Sculpey brands, but if you get hold of some, it’s well worth trying.
4. Sculpey Souffle
Sculpey Soufflé feels softer than Premo and felt like a firmer version of Sculpey III, hence it’s in this position on the list! The main thing I noticed about Sculpey Soufflé is that it’s very easy to blend seams – I didn’t need a tool to smooth over a seam on the side of the cup as I could just use my fingers.
Sculpey Soufflé is as easy to blend as Sculpey III, but it’s firmer, so it didn’t feel as though it was softening to the point of being unworkable when I used it. Once it was cured, it had a matte finish so it’s worth bearing this in mind when choosing the end look you want for your miniature project.
My five-year old daughter made her own cup out of Sculpey Soufflé and managed to work with the clay just fine. She even said that it was easier than the other clay she’d been playing around with (the generic brand off Amazon). I’d say it’s a great clay for kids as it’s firm enough to not be frustrating, but soft enough for kids to easily play around building models with it.
5. Sculpey III
As miniature modelling is very fiddly due to working on such a small scale, soft polymer clay is a no-go as it can be extremely hard to model with when the clay won’t hold its shape.
I’d used Sculpey III for some previous projects and found it very difficult to work with. It felt as though it was melting in my hands as I worked with it – I actually found some of the clay transferred to my fingers it’s so soft.
However, making the miniature cup with Sculpey III wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be. I had to make it quickly, as even though I’d stored the clay in our downstairs bathroom (the coldest place in the house, and possibly the world!) it was super soft straight out of the packet.
It felt like a race against the clock to make this tiny teacup, but the clay held its shape long enough for me to make the cup, so it was easier than I thought it would be.
As with Sculpey Soufflé, the benefit of a softer clay is that it’s really easy to smooth over seams and breaks in the surface of the clay.
A downside of Sculpey III is from what I’ve read it’s not very strong once baked and is very brittle. Strength is more of an issue with polymer clay that’s exposed to wear and tear, such as jewellery, so it may not be as big a deal for miniatures used to display in dollhouses for example. However, I know my kids will want to play with any miniatures I make so I’ll definitely be sticking with a stronger clay!
6. Cernit
I’d not heard much about Cernit as it doesn’t seem to be anywhere near as popular as brands like Fimo and Sculpey, and not as many places seem to sell it either. But, in the interests of fairness, I bought a pack to see how it would hold up making miniatures.
The results weren’t great, unfortunately! It’s extremely soft, even softer than Sculpey III, which seems to have some notoriety in polymer clay crafting circles for being too soft to work. I found Cernit very difficult to work with and struggled to get any kind of cup-like shape with it – hence the result looks like a milk jug! Even straight out of the packet, it needed virtually no conditioning as it was so soft I felt if I conditioned it for more than a few seconds, it would become far too soft to work with.
I found that the tools seemed to tear through Cernit easily and the clay stuck to my fingers as I was working with it. I do have quite warm hands but I did this experiment in the middle of the UK winter when it was -1 outside so it was pretty cool!
I do wonder if things went so wrong because I chose a clay from the Cernit Nature range, they clay in this range has lots of tiny particles in it to create the look of stone once it’s cured. I bought this clay as I thought it would be perfect for a little stone crockery set, but I think I need to brush up on my modelling skills before I try this clay again!
Apparently Cernit is the polymer clay of choice for making dolls and the clay as a translucent quality to it. If I perfect my Cernit technique then it might be the perfect clay for making tiny fairies with! I think I have a long way to go before that happens though!
7. Generic Amazon Brand
There are loads of different multipack polymer clays on Amazon and I bought one of these for my first foray into making miniatures. I soon realised why these sets were so cheap – the clay is near impossible to work with!
This type of polymer clay is incredibly soft and stretchy, it felt like it was dissolving in my hands even after less than a minute of working with it. It sticks to everything and it’s so good at sticking to itself that if you put something in the wrong place on a model (as I did with the teacup handle) it’s impossible to remove it.
I’ve given some to my daughter to craft with, but even she gets frustrated with it. So we now use it as a practice clay for adding colours or embellishments, blending with other clays or making weird and wonderful messy models.
To see just how smooshy Cernit and Sculpey III are, this is how easy it was to squash unconditioned clay straight out of the packet.
Conclusion
As I said at the start, I’m relatively new to using polymer clay, so if you’re a newbie like me then I’d definitely try Sculpey Premo and Fimo Professional as your clay of choice for miniatures.
But, everyone works differently and prefers different textures and styles of clay so I’d defiantly recommend experimenting.
Finally, I did some research around the web and Sculpey Premo, Fimo Professional and Kato Polyclay are consistently recommended as the best clays for modelling in general. This isn’t necessarily for mini modelling as there’s not much information on the best clay for making miniatures – which is why I wrote this post!
But if you’re looking for the best all-round, easy to use clay it has to be Premo, Fimo Professional and Kato Polyclay.
