Make Polymer Clay Cats

Creating these fun creatures is not difficult and will start your own sculptured collection. They are great to give as gifts, or just to add them to your shelf containing other precious art pieces.

Steps

1. Start by kneading the clay into a ball. Squish and roll it and warm it until is is a soft pliable consistency. Make it spherical and work it from there.
2. Pull out the various appendages: Four more-or-less equal legs, a longer tail and a fatter head. Give the head a couple of ears, and it should already be starting to look a little bit like a cat.
3. Keep sculpting until it's a plausible cat shape. It might even have some personality - if so, you might like to go with it.
4. Keep making the tail more tail-like, keep making the head more cat-like, and hopefully a personality will emerge, whether through design or of its own accord.
5. Roll out a sausage of glow-in-the-dark clay for the eyes (it’s easier to divide a sausage evenly). Surprise cat eyes glowing in the dark are amusing but use your own personal preference.
6. Split the sausage into two equal parts and roll them into balls. Work carefully on the eyes, as they are the single most important part of almost any critter. Every little change or move can change the look. For example, unevenly sized eyeballs give an air of derangement. So take care when working with them but be prepared for them to surprise you.
7. Attach the balls to the front of the head, and presto! You now have a cat that can stare at people.
8. Split a very small black sausage of clay in half and roll up the pieces to make the pupils. Attach them to the eyes. This is one of the most delicate parts of the whole process, because the amount of clay involved is so tiny and black; you may need to use a sculpting tool or a blunt knife to attach them to the eyeballs.
9. Give the cat eyelids (optional). You can give the cat upper and lower lids, or stick with just upper lids. Make them from a semi-circle of clay, created by forming a ball, then squashing and halving it.
10. Shape the lids into rough semicircles and carefully affix them at a precise angle. The way that the lids are attached can easily make the difference between a critter which is sweetly looking for affection, and one which is brimming over with malevolence.Take care in attaching them
11. Carefully concentrate on the details of its body language. Make the cat look the way your imagination and artistic nature take you.
    • A tail is a beautifully expressive thing. For instance, when a cat is mad, it is moving slowly.
    • The set of a cat’s ears and the angle of its head can tell you a great deal.
    • The way it is standing is crucial.
12. Take care to make the texture of the piece as smooth as you want it with gentle rubbing, and correct any minor flaws. Then place it on a baking tray, laying it on its side or supporting it around the middle, because unbaked polymer clay legs are flimsy, and become softer while being baked. Place the tray in an oven preheated to 130° C (265°F), and bake for 20-30 minutes according to the instructions that come with the clay.
13. Finished.

Make Ball Cats

1. "To make a ball cat, you need to have one main colour. Use this to make 2 big balls, then chop the smaller one into sixths. Make four of them balls again. The other 2 should be slightly triangular. Put them on the intact ball."
2. " Now you have the ears, put the four balls on the other side of them - make it look like a cat car with no windows. "
3. " Next, make a fat sausage for the tail if you want it to look bushy and more like an original ball cat. If not, then do a tail like a thin worm. Put it on, and make sure that it is smoothed on."
4. "Now we need to do the eyes. Make two small white ovals and squish them on ts head. They should get bigger. Make black circles very small. Squish them on.
5. "Voila! You're done. Bake it on a tray and follow the instructions on the packet that the clay came in. try to use the same clay for your products as the different clay may need to be baked at different times and temperatures!"

Tips

• The directions provided in this article are to assist you to learn how to sculpt this piece. The final sculpture that you create, however, should be guided by your own creativity; after all, it will live in your home, and it should reflect the artist in you.
• Use any color that pleases you; be creative and make it multi-colored if you wish.

Warnings

• Before the piece is hardened, be especially careful with the legs. Handle them gently, and grasp it lightly around the belly. The shape will not remain until you have baked it.

Things You'll Need

• Purchase any brand of oven-baking polymer clay, such as Sculpey III, Premo or Fimo Classic or Soft.
• Colors of your choice.
• For the pupils buy black or other dark polymer clay.
• For the irises, white, glow-in-the-dark or green polymer clay work well.

Related Articles

• Animate Clay
• Sculpt Using Sand and Portland Cement
• Mix Plaster for Sculpture
• Do Ceramic Sculpture
• Learn All About Polymer Clay
• Make a Polymer Clay Tiny Book
• Paint a River Rock
• Soften Polymer Clay

External Links

• oolong blog Original source of this article. Shared with permission.

See also

• Make Clay Dolls
• Make a Clay Person
• Make a Brain Out of Clay
• Make a Clay Volcano
• Make a Clay Rose from Modeling Clay
• Sculpt a Dolphin Using Clay
• Make a Standing Tiger Out of Clay
• Make Molds for Plaster Statues
• Make a Clay Dragon
• Make Clay Mushrooms

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• Learn All About Polymer Clay
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