hi guys, it's cindy lietz, your polymer clay tutor in today's studio tip, i'm going to show you how to make your own diy sanding blocks, that you can use for sanding polymer clay, but they also
antique woodworking tools canada, will work great for any other type of crafting project or woodworking project that you need to sand. alright, so in this video, i'm going to
show you a bunch of different examples, why you'd even want to have a sanding pad, the difference between a sanding pad and sanding sponges and how they work, and everything, and how to make them. alright, alright, so when you're sanding polymer clay, it is... you can get a really beautiful finish if you hand sand, and usually we do that. i have actually a
whole bunch of videos on it already so you can check those out but what you basically need is some wet-dry sandpaper, whether you're using an automotive sandpaper like these ones here in a bunch of different grits. oh and by the way, i will leave links in the description to all the products that i talk about in this video so that you
don't have to look them up yourself. alright, so you can use... you can get wet-dry sandpaper in all kinds of different grits, you can also get something that's called polishing papers that come in super fine grits. you can use something like micro-mesh, there's lots of different abrasives out there. and if you use them when you're sanding polymer clay,
generally, what we do is we take up a piece and whatever grit that we're using, we rip it into small enough piece to deal with and we usually fold it over and sand our piece and then it wears out. and the thing is, is if you use a sanding block or a sanding pad, you can get, you can get a lot more wear out of your sandpaper. so for example, if you've got a
little piece of sandpaper here, it tends to get folded. you never really end up using all the edges of the piece and it wears out in certain spots. also, it can be hard to hold in your hand. your hand can get a little stiff when you're sanding with it directly. sometimes people are getting their... fingertips sanded down and all kinds of
stuff. so a sanding pad makes it a lot easier to hold and having a little bit of cushion to it make.. gives a lot more give when you're sanding something with a rounded surface. there are all kinds of sanding blocks and things available on the market already. there are things called sanding sponges and that's what this is here, a sanding sponge, you can
see this was very worn out. i'd never use this one on polymer clay, it's a little too coarse. and then there's like thin ones like this one here. this one actually is a 3000 grit sanding sponge. there's these sanding sponges here, that i just got from a polymer clay pen-making kit from penn state industries. they are a spongy little sanding pad or
sanding sponge and then it's got kind of a fabric type abrasive on it they work really nicely. then there are the micro mesh pads, there's little ones like this, there's a little bit larger size. i believe it is a 2 by 3 inch size or it could be 3 by 4, can't quite remember. anyways, there's these and the nice thing about the cushion on this is
that it's got enough give, a little... you can bend it a little bit, but it's something to hold onto. and then you know there's things that are meant for the nail art or you know, taking care of your fingernails. this one is a buffing... nail-buffing type tool, it has that two different grits on it and it's made with the sponge that has a bit of give to it.
also, if you have a jooltool, there's different products out there. there's... i don't know if doug can get up close here, but this has got what they call a bump on pad which is a little bit of cushion. they also have a new thicker cushion that... for the abrasives, but i can show you how you can make your own with really cheap materials and it just makes it so
much more cost-effective, and you can use whatever abrasive that is your favorite. you can use a firmer one like i'm going to show you today. this is a thicker foam and it has enough room to hold onto but still a fair amount of give so it's good for rounded surfaces or square surfaces, or you can use a little bit thinner foam like these ones here, where you can
bend it right into small areas, curve it right around larger areas and it still had... gives enough of something to hold onto, so that it's not so hard on your fingers and your hands. and also, i also made my own diy cushions for my jooltool by using the same technique. so let me show you the different materials and what you can do.
alright, so you're going to need to choose the abrasive of your choice. i've got some videos on abrasives, i'll be doing lots more in the future, if you have questions about it specifically, then make sure to ask in the comments section below. but these are some polishing pads or papers that i've bought before. i'm going to use the
wet/dry sandpaper, it's readily available. also, i found a set that has like a whole bunch of different types of grits in it that i'll put the link to but all that... you can get it in like 220 grit, 400 grit, 600, i have 800, and i have a thousand here. and their... these are all beautiful grits to use with polymer clay. the one i'm going to
make, i need to make a... which one do i need to make? i need to make an 800 one so i'll grab one of those sheets now. there it is a piece of paper, and then you're going to need some foam to stick that to. so there's a couple of really cool options. you can get... this is called craft foam. you can get in lots of fun colors and stuff, i happen to have some in black and white.
this is quite thin stuff here, it's got an adhesive backing to it, you could use that if you wanted to. today, i'm going to be using this thicker stuff. it is 6 millimeters thick, which is about... about a quarter of an inch thick and it's just craft foam. people use it for all kinds of different things it's super cheap. so you can buy them for
around a dollar, a package... or a dollar a sheet. this one is an 8 and a half by 11 type size and these ones don't have an adhesive on it but i'm going to show you how to use it without adhesive. and you need an adhesive some sort. so these ones i made using some... it's used in scrapbooking industry a lot, this dub... it's really strong, super strong
double stick tape. this one is actually... made by start a company called scorpal and i'll put a link for that as well. but it comes in a variety of widths. this one, because it's sold in canada, is this, i think this is like 30 millimeters but the ones sold in the states are more like they're 1 inch, so this is just like 1 inch and one eighth wide. but the
one-inch one is a little bit more practical size. and i'm going to be using that one but you could also use these.. these little ones here were made by my friend after i was telling her i was making these pads. she made her own little pads with some thinner foam and then she used gorrilla glue and the... whatever adhesive you use, it needs to be
able to handle being in the water. you don't want to use white glue that's going to... like regular white glue that will just soften up and fall apart once it's been in the water because we're going to use that in water whatever we're sanding with it. so all you need to do is figure out what size you want your sanding block to be. she
made hers quite little, very similar to the... the micro mesh ones, but i made mine a little larger like a little more room. but you could make it... if you've got a bigger hand if your man or something you've got a larger hand, then you can make it whatever size you like and whatever is comfortable to you. so i like this one, it's double the width of
my tape so it's about two and a quarter inches wide and i'm going to use a ruler. this is that one of those tim holtz rulers with the grid on it so you can keep it nice and straight but it's got a metal edge on it so you want to use something like that. let's get this all out of the way so i have my table here. you'll want to use a
self-healing mat, something you can cut on without wrecking it. and i'm going to cut mine two and a quarter inches wide but you probably cut yours 2 inches wide if you get a 1 inch size tape, so the quarter. and i'm just going to use a craft knife to cut it out. this really new, cool craft knife that i'll show you. this one is called a penblade and i
guess it was like the product of the year but it's super, super sharp and i just love it. so you press this button down the knife comes out and then you close it up like that but i'm going to use that one to cut out the foam. i won't use it when i cut out the sandpaper because they don't want to wreck my good knife with the sand with the blade. but
i want to show you this cool blade alright, all i'm going to do is just cut through the craft foam at 2 inch, two and a half quarter inches wide, just like that, cuts like butter or stiff butter. and then this is 9 inches long so i'm going to make it in evenly split. so i'm going to do a three and three like that and
cut it again. now, you don't have to be super perfect. if you wanted to have a different shape, you could do that square is nice and easy to do because you can get lots and lots of pieces out, out of a sheet of paper and a one sheet of pic... sandpaper, one sheet of foam, just like that. you can also get those micro mesh sheets those would work great as well. now, i'm
going to use the double stick tape, like i said. this is a beautiful product, i'm just going to stick it down to my... to my foam. cut it off, stick another piece down. now, the nice thing about making your own, like i said, is that now there won't be any limits to what type of adhesive you can get. i mean what kind of abrasive you can get in a foam form or a sanding pad
form, because you know most of the... you don't find every type of sandpaper on a foam so... and they're expensive. these are well, the micro mesh ones for example, or like 10 to 20 dollars for a set and then they wear out, where if you make them yourself, they're just pennies, really, to make them. and then you can change them up, you can keep adding new sheets
of paper on them and everything else. ok, so i'm just using like a little tool to... bone tool, to make sure it's really stuck down. that and then i'm just going to pop it up. is it stuck down? just want to make sure it's really stuck, you don't want any air bubbles or water to get underneath there because then, it'll start peeling up and then
that will be a pain. you don't want that. alright, so let's get this up, here we go. there we go. alrighty, now, we can stick this down to any other sandpapers so i put it... so this is my 800 grit, i'm just going to stick that down to the paper. i'm going to leave a little space around so i can trim it nice
and tight. i don't want to have any paper sticking out. and now i'm going to use my not so great craft knife this one is getting worn out so i don't want to use a really sharp beautiful knife on sandpaper. it's going to be hard on it but anyways, i will trim around it. hopefully my hands not in the way, just trim around it. if there was any tape
hanging or tape hanging over the edge, then i can remove it at this time. i want it just as clean as possible. here we go. and now we have an 800 grit sanding block. it's super easy. now, i'm going to write on the back here so i know what it is, just going to use a ballpoint pen really press hard into into the back here so it leaves a little
indent. if you use a sharpie or something, you might see it, but the black on black might be hard. so just going to kind of press right into that foam and now i have a little sanding block that i can use, it does beautiful in the water. go over here, you can just put it right in the water it's always going to float. and you can sand your little piece
however you want and it's nice to hold its got your fingers up out of the way you can bend it a little if you need it. now, if you like the more flexible ones, then just use a thinner foam and one thing that was going to point out to you, one thing that will make your sandpaper last a lot longer is if you clean it. now, this one here, it's not too
bad, but can you see that there's some color on the sandpaper there? that's because there's polymer clay trapped in it you'll usually see it on the coarser grits a lot but just use like a tooth brush and scrub it. it'll get all the... it out... get it out from those little-little valley, nooks and crannies and valleys in there. it'll clean it right up and then
it'll make it work a lot longer. so if you're going to do something like this for the jooltool, for example, most of you probably don't have one but if you have a jooltool and you want to make one of these nice cushions, what you're going to do, is you're going to grab your foam. you're going to take... you're going to take your your ninja disc on abrasive, trace
around it with a pencil and then what you're going to do is just cut it out with the exacto knife. you're going to use this, you're going to stick this to it. this has an adhesive on the back of it, you're going to peel that off and stick that down to your foam and then you're going to use the adhesive to stick it to your back pad.
actually it's easier to cut the adhesive if you stick the adhesive all on the back like the tape on the back first, in a block big enough to fit the area and then don't peel up the paper. then trace around here. sorry, i should've mentioned that first trace around here, cut it out and cut right through to the other paper in the back and then it
stays cleaner. it's easier to cut around than trying to fiddle around trying to cut out your tape. alright, so i hope that was helpful for you. if it was, do let us know and if you would like to have any... if you have any suggestions for techniques, tips, demos that you would like me to do, make sure to leave those in the comments section
below. and make sure to subscribe to our channel, we've got lots of cool stuff coming in all the time and we'd love that if you subscribe, and click the like button, and share the video, and all that fun social media stuff. alright, so we'll see you next time and bye for now.
