Some essential (and some 'nice to have') polymer tools and kit
There are quite a few brands with very different characteristics.
Some people's favourite blade for use with polymer. Slightly bendy, long and reasonably sharp.
Pasta machine - everyone recommends Mercato Atlas 150s and they can be found on ebay relatively cheaply.
Cheap white tiles - don't get the bumpy version!! Great for lots of things and work well as a worksurface.
Essential piece of kit - tho a flat sided glass can be used at a pinch
Dedicated mini oven - these aren't expensive and, as long as you're careful about temperature spikes, they work brilliantly for clay,.
Very useful, especially for small ovens where the temperature spikes can ruin your pieces (or under-cure them)
Bog standard metal oven dish lined with polyester fibrefill (and no, it doesn't melt!).
Lots of uses - from making skinner blends to working out bangle sizes. And metal won't react to the polymer like some plastics do.
Essential (unfortunately). Get a set of different grits starting at about 240 and going up to 1000.
There are loads...
Some can be rolled through the pasta machine - others don't fit!
Useful for almost any project. Seamless are best (but can be expensive).
Can be used to shape clay around - eg two sides of a bead.
Basic Makins extruder. Hard on the hands and quite a small barrel. Low tech but effective.
Bamboo and metal skewers have hundreds of uses.
Great to use as a release agent (eg spray on a texture stamp before pressing into the clay). Cornflour works too.
Useful for making identically shaped and sized sides of lentil beads...
Cotton bag filled with cornflour - great for smoothing out fingerprints and stopping things sticking.
Essential for getting your oven timings right... sometimes also for timings for glue and resin.
Shimmering powder for adding to raw clay or (with a binder) to cured clay.
Useful for cleaning all sorts of stuff
These bead pins are very sharp and work well in the oven
Colour choices are one of the most important aspects of working with polymer - a colour wheel might help!
Polymer takes texture beautifully - get a few and experiment!
...in case you'd like to stamp names, dates or anything else in your clay!
Very useful bakeable liquid polymer clay which also doubles as a transfer medium
Useful for keeping stacks of sheets of rolled clay from sticking to itself
Helps polymer bond to other surfaces like metal and glass.
Useful for making beads...
Very useful for all sorts of things - particularly mokume gane
Inka gold is a sort of metallic paint with the texture of butter. It can be applied very successfully to the surface of both cured and uncured polymer.
Useful for some sorts of cane-work
Add a few drops to horrible crumbly old clay and - after a lot of work - it might be reusable!
Incredibly good for smoothing and burnishing flat surfaces prior to curing. Reduces the amount of sanding you might have to do!