Tuesday Tips Featuring Gloved Hands

I've been running a little poll on the sidebar of the blog, to find out what you'd like to see more in the new year. I decided to dedicate Tuesdays to posting a tip here and there. Nothing earth-shattering.

Just little tidbits.

Tuesday Tip Tidbits. Say that three times fast ...

Anyway, here's the first one for the year. I don't have specific topics in mind, so they may be a little random. But hopefully there'll be something you can use from time to time.




The mysterious story of the

black gloved hands ....

Not really.

(check out the link to the source for these, there are black gloves like the CSI folks use - cool, huh?)


In working with polymer clay for beadmaking, wear disposable latex or nitrile acrylic gloves. It protects your hands from the clay, paints, liquid polymer clay, glazes or other products you use when you work with polymer clay, as well as the plasticizers in the polymer clay itself.

And it keeps your fingerprints off the clay, reducing sanding and making a smoother surface on your polymer clay beads.

If you find your hands getting damp inside the latex gloves while you're working, cut out the palm section and the back of the hand and just leave the thumb and fingers. You'd be surprised how well they stay on, even without the entire glove. And your hands will stay dry, mostly.

There are things called finger cots that you can find in some office supply stores, you apply just to the finger part. I find that I'm always losing those off my fingertips, but if you like those you can stick them to your fingers with just a little blue painter's tape. Imagine how interesting your hands will look after this?

Another tip is to rub powder onto your hands before putting on the gloves to keep them dry and make it easier to pull them on and off. And if you put on one pair of gloves and rub the powder on the glove exterior, you can pull on another pair on top. When the first pair gets wet, messy or discolored, just pull them off and you have a fresh pair on underneath like magic!

Finally, get gloves that are the right size for your hands so that they fit snugly. Then you won't have puckers at the fingertips that will interfere with your smooth handling of the polymer clay.

These tips also work with 2-part resin, super glue or paper archival glue, casting plaster and painting it, doing collage painting on paper, or anything that's messy and wet, gets under your fingernails and sticks to your hands!