Cernit clay – Good old friend, long time no see!

Hello!

I had decided to make Ibuki's little decoration amulet thingy to make the cosplay more complete before Oulun animeseminaari. Because I'm very short on time I decided to roll with something I knew how to use and that ended being nothing less than your commonly found cernit polymer clay! It's seemingly more properly called polymer clay in English but everyone in Finland and Sweden call it "cernit clay" so that's what I will call it in this post.
As a kid there was a period when I made a lot of own small Pokémon figurines out of cernit clay and I remember it being rather easy to use. Cernit clay is an oven-baked modeling clay with a porcelain finish that comes in a lot of different colors and variations (glittery, semi-transparent etc). I remembered from my childhood days –aka the last time I used cernit clay– that every time we baked the clay, to have it harden, it would always turn darker than the original color and this is why I picked a lighter purple than what was accurate. Also the store I bought my cernit clay from only had a light purple clay and a very dark purple one and well, the dark one was way too dark.

So I used half of the clay for Ibuki's amulet and when I was done shaping it into a good enough form I used the leftovers of the half (still have the other half unused) and made random horns out of it. I will use them for a future Original Character cosplay. By the way, if anyone wonders I made the hole into the clay (before baking it of course) with a wooden circular ice cream stick – yeah, it's the one on the photo. xD When I had made the hole and had the clay around the stick it looked like purple kebab. lol
I must say that when you first take the cernit clay out of the package and start shaping it it's a bit hard and clumsy but it quickly softens when you work it. Finger prints and other pressure marks leave traces veeeery easily that can be annoying to get rid off. I also noticed that because I was rolling the clay against a wooden table –to get it to soften– that even the smallest of dirt got stuck into the clay – small hair strands, dust etc. Also if you roll the clay against paper make sure it has no prints on it because these will trace themselves into the clay as well. Yeah, both of these I tell from personal experience.

I put my shaped cernit clay pieces into the oven for 30 minutes in approximately 110 °C. Good thing that the oven in the common kitchen works on a timer (when you put it on you press a button on the wall which starts a 30 min timer) so I didn't have to put on an alarm and/or sit and stare at my clay pieces while they get grilled.

Into the fire!

30 minutes later I came to pick my dearies up and I noticed that indeed they had turned nigga darker. :'D This was actually a good thing because now my light purple clay was closer to the color I wanted!

Color comparison of unbaked and baked cernit clay – there's quite the difference!

I took out my Ibuki amulet and checked if I could still fit my ribbon rope thing through it and oh yes I could! I checked on a reference and tried making a close enough knotting system thingy and it worked out pretty well; now to just tie it to the blue waist string each time I wear Ibuki so that I get it on the right place!

Ryunosuke Ibuki reference.

Finished (almost) Ibuki amulet thing.

I'm now ready for Animeseminaari, see you there!