While I work primarily with polymer clay – oven bake or low firing plastic clays – I do also play with air dry clays, both earth and paper based, as well as high fire stoneware clay. And occasionally with fondant. The tools and techniques are similar across the board, especially for decorative fine work.

This spooky tree is made with paperclay (great stuff, I can definitely recommend it) and to do the same tree in polymer clay I would actually use aluminum foil in place of the newspaper for the insides. If you wanted to make your polymer clay version of this with light up eyes, I would build up the aluminum foil armature over a brass tube right from the start. The entire kit for the light would probably be safe to bake (you can bake the structure for flash drives, for example, no issue) but you would want to test that first.

For the texturing on polymer clay I would do it while the clay was uncured but you could certainly do it afterwards with a dremel and a carving tip. Paint your tree as in the tutorial and arrange for your spooky Halloween decor.

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