Tip: "I have found that you can use polystyrene pieces around your wire armature to build up volume, cover it with masking tape to keep it all together and finally coat it with a thin layer of resin mixed with talc powder. Very cheap and light yet very strong. Dont get any cracks since it is 'hollow'."

Tip: "When sculptureing, make sure if your using white clay, to keep it wet to stop it from drying up! If you're sculpting something abstract (that's all I do) then go crazy and wild! Do whatever you can. Keep things that are not attached to the main object thick so that they will stay up and together. Make your 'object' smooth and flowing, almost like its growing! Hope you can take my advice and go wild!!!"

Tip: "When sculpting legs, arms, tails,etc. - wrap the armature with air dry clay first. This stops the hair line cracks. If you don't have air dry clay, use oven dry clay to make a "skeleton" on the wire, bake, and then sculpt your subject.

Here is another neat idea for more strength in a large flat area, such as a leaf. Put six layers of tin foil between the layers of clay. This also gives your pieces strength to be shaped the way you want it.

Another way of strengthening small sculptures is to use some of the new flex clay mixed into the regular sculpey clay.

To make a sculpture look and feel just like a real bronze sculpture, use three parts black and one part gold polymer clay. Glue your baked finished sculpture onto a finished piece of wood and then onto a nice flat polished rock, or one you have around your area, and then varnish it. The rock gives your art the hefty feel of a real bronze!"

Tip: "I have made sculptures and found out some of them use so much clay that to make it cost so much money. So i decided to try something. I make balls and snakes out of tinfoil and and cover it with clay if I am doing a big project. I use a ball for the center of the body or the head. It really works well."

Tip: "If you do figure sculptures with metal armatures, do you ever get hairline cracks in legs, arms, etc? These are due to the miniscule shrinking of the clay and the expansion of the metal in the oven. If you wrap your armature with floral tape, then you won't get these cracks."