My Cozy Clay Business_ Polymer Clay Process + My Favorite Art Supplies ✿ Studio Vlog

Hi! Welcome to another studio vlog. If you don't know me, my name is Tammy or I go by Uncomfy because your girl's anxious. But yeah, this is what I do for a living. I sculpt and I make art. Sometimes I do design, that's what I'm in school for. I'm in my pjs right now and I didn't really feel like doing the whole eye makeup thing so I guess that's really just establishing the mood for today. I'm just trying to sculpt. I'm just trying to sculpt as many things as I can today because school starts next week for me so my last week of summer isn't really gonna be that much fun because everyone around me got COVID anyway so I can't really do anything with them. And I'm taking that as a blessing in disguise because I really do have so much work to do. Usually I ship out 20 to 25 orders a week but I want to ship out 50 orders by this Friday so that I can have enough breathing room to really get used to the swing of going to campus again and then going home to continue working. So yeah, it's just super chill. I'm gonna be sculpting. I'll show you what I've made so far and then I'll probably do another Q&A at the end. Here's everything that I've sculpted so far. Half of this is from yesterday and then half of this is from this morning. All these fishies make me so happy. These strawberry ones will look so different once they're baked because- well, all of them will look really different once they're baked because I used translucent clay so they end up looking a lot more like pastel-y and jelly-like so yeah. And then these cows, I've switched from pastels to just painting them afterwards because I like how sharp the paint looks. It looks a lot more professional when I do it that way. And then surprisingly, two wizards. I guess a lot of people are actually getting ready for fall right now so that makes sense. Is this a good angle? I've been watching kdramas again. I'm sure you guys know what this one is. Oh, she's breaking up with him. So, Doe ordered these two prints. They look so good together. I'm so excited to pack this. I always put thank you cards and everything and then on the back it just has like my little thank you message. Basically just saying like, I hope this makes you comfy in this really uncomfy world. This tombow tape is so good. Here's my little box of stickers. I usually do clay so I don't have that many stickers which is why I can fit everything in this tiny box. It's so cute. I made these new tulip radish stickers so these are going to be the new freebies. Just like that. So this is everything that's going into the package. I got these new rigid mailers so they're super like thick cardboard so they don't get bent in transit. This is the moment of truth, you guys. So cute. I made these maxine memo pads. I think they're so cute. This one's for me because I ripped off the top already but this is my first like stationery thing. Hello, it's the next morning and I just got a package from Vistaprint and Vistaprint is where I order my bulk like thank you cards and printed things like business cards, stuff like that. I still make my own stickers but for things that I need hundreds of, I'll do Vistaprint because it's like better quality, it's pretty good price, and it saves me time. So learning how to delegate money to services that will save you time is such a big skill that you have to learn as a small business owner because I know that especially artists, we have like the DIY mindset like, oh I could just make that myself but is it really worth it if you're like taking hours to print a hundred postcards and cut them and trim them yourself? Like it's just not worth it because you're giving those out for free. Like my thank you cards come with every order for free so it doesn't make sense for me to spend like a mass majority amount of my time making those things, you know? But anyway, I was ordering new thank you cards and then on a whim I decided to make memo pads and they're so cute. I'm so happy with how they turned out. It has maxine on it with a mini maxine and then a little tangerine on the corner and I was afraid of how the colors would turn out but they turned out pretty good. It's suitable for the end of summer but also suitable for fall because it's still like fall colors. It's four inches by five inches so it's like a really good portable but still big enough size to take a lot of memos. I personally use memo pads all the time because I take notes like off the top of my head all the time. I don't want to have to open my Notion app and I don't want to have to open up my like strappy notebook and like find a page. Like I love memo pads. I'm just so happy. This is my first like stationary item that I've made other than stickers. I'm gonna list them in the shop shortly but yeah I'm just so happy about it. I wanted to share this with you. This is the most important part. I finally finished all the things that I am capable of making this time around. It's mostly keychains, phone charms, and earrings this time and only two desk friends. All right it's been 35 minutes or probably more like 40 minutes and I'm gonna take them out of that. Beautiful. You can already kind of tell that the fishes are turning translucent and that's the translucent clay that I use from Fimo. They'll get more jelly-like once they've cooled down and I've glazed them so they'll be super shiny and super beautiful. So while these are cooling down I'm gonna make myself some breakfast just because I can't really do anything until they're cooled down. I can't sand them. I can't paint any of the small details on so I'm gonna nourish myself first because I have a whole day ahead of me. Okay we're in the sun now so I can show you how the fishes look after they're fully cooled down and I'm gonna paint the small details and glaze everything else. Hello it's voiceover Tammy. I wanted to add this segment where I'm demonstrating how I use my favorite polymer clay art supplies. So here's a Posca pen and I use it to add small details such as the stars and moons on my wizard radish hats. I think they add a nice stability and in my opinion it's just way easier than using a tiny paintbrush. And then I go in with a needle point tool to sharpen the edges afterwards because it is still 0.7 millimeters wide so it's not super tiny. Here I am messing up and I'll show you how I fix that. With Posca and acrylic you can actually remove the paint with rubbing alcohol. So here I am just dipping a q-tip into the rubbing alcohol and swabbing it away. It's super easy and I use this trick all the time. And now it's good as new and I can continue working on it. And here are all the wizards that I ended up making that day. So satisfying to see. The next tool I want to talk about is my micron pen and I use this to add tiny little faces or other black details onto my polymer clay charms. So you see here I have this tiny frog cake and I indented where I wanted the eyes and I'm placing the mouth in the middle of them. Microns will last a lot longer than sharpies so I recommend using those. And here are some craftsmart acrylic paints which is my favorite brand. I'm using my ballpoint tools to make these tiny flowers. It's a super easy but cute way to make flowers if you don't want to make them with clay which can be tedious. I just use paint afterwards. And you can be creative with the paint. I use it for mushrooms, other flowers, I use it for cat prints, cow prints. I forgot that clip was coming up. And craftsmart is such a great brand because it's so cheap but look how opaque that paint is. Other paints are too thick but I love the consistency of this one. And there is my mamamoo desk friend. Can she walk in the fire? Can she run in the rain? Can she make it up the mountainside? Can she make it down again? I have often wondered. I have a sushi date tonight so that's why my hair is in a curler and I did my makeup and everything. But I got this really thick metal chain to assemble my keychains. So they're a lot thicker now. I originally chose like these tiny tiny jump rings to assemble all my keychains because I wanted it to be dainty almost. But now I'm really into like this chunky metal look. I feel like the chunkiness almost complements like how round and boopy they are. But obviously the biggest benefit to this super thick metal chain is that it's a lot more sturdy and it's like way less likely to break than my previous keychains. The only thing is that it's super hard to open and close these loops. But I think like I finally found a technique to where I'm not hurting my hands as much like trying to strain. I think I need to get bigger pliers because these are really tiny actually. They're travel size but I think maybe bigger pliers would help with my grip strength. Someone asked me in my TikTok comments if I ever get carpal tunnel and I surprisingly don't nowadays. But I think it's because I've been exercising a lot more. So that's just a reminder to you guys if you do- sorry that's my dog outside. But this is just a reminder to you guys if you do a lot of arts and crafts to like take care of your body. Like take care of your posture. Stretching is super important especially stretching your wrist like this and like rotating it and stuff. But yeah I think that's helped me a lot with like my wrist pain and so it's mostly back pain now but I'm still working on that. Hello again! It's packing time which means it's time for another Q&A. I think I'm going to try to do this every video where I answer a couple more questions that I didn't get to last time. So the first question today is what started your love for making things with clay? I think I've answered this in various ways on different platforms but I really started crafting with polymer clay when I was like eight or ten years old. It was actually YouTube videos that prompted me to beg my mom to take me to Michael's and my first two colors that I got were green and purple. So the only things I made for years after that were either green or purple and I was pretty bad at it but I mean I remember making so many things from YouTube tutorials from So Craftastic and My Petite Cakes and people like that. So it's just crazy that I'm pretty much living my dream that I've always had. I'm making YouTube videos now and I'm making a living by healing my inner child. Off topic but this is the pho cat that I worked on in my last vlog where I sketched out the soup cat and that was it. I think it turned out great. The next question is how do you get out of a creative art block? For many people it can be down to being burnt out but if you don't feel burnt out maybe try another medium. I always love switching things up from clay to painting and painting always inspires me to make things out of clay again so maybe try that. The rest of this video has some pretty satisfying sounds so I'll leave it to be quiet and peaceful. Finally ready