Premo Accents 2016 Polymer Clay Review - Baking It, What's Good and Bad and Project Crafting Tips

Premo Accents Directions for Baking

How long in the oven? You'll need to give Accents polymer clay twice the time in the oven as most other Polyform oven curing products. Leave it in for 30 minutes for every 1/4 inch (6mm) of unbaked clay. Like Premo Sculpey, it can handle multiple curing cycles, but take precautions when baking lighter colors to prevent yellowing or browning. Follow the link for more answers to common baking questions.

Temperature Setting? 275F (130C)

How Many Colors? There are 26 Accent formulations which include such 'special effects' as semi-transparent colors, pearlized hues and a translucent called Frost. Any of them can be mixed with any of the other Premo Sculpey colors or any other polymers in the Polyform product line.

What's my favorite new Premo Accent color? The new Opal looks very convincing when baked and then dunked into ice water immediately after you take it out of the oven.

It is such a time saver. I've made opal mixes by laboriously mixing large iridescent glitter flakes into translucent clay. The flakes slid everywhere and it took forever to get everything to stick together. I'm so happy to let the machines at Polyform do all that work for me. 

Mix a bit of another color clay into Opal to create pastel tinted opal accents.

Packaging: 2 ounces, 8 oz and one pound packs.

What's the Price? The cost is usually around $1.00/ounce, that's about 40% higher than Sculpey III. But artists can produce so many amazing effects with these that we gladly fork over the extra cash. Premo Accents is also frequently on sale, you can check Amazon at the link.

Insider's Crafting Tips

I'm in love with this clay. Combined with Premo Sculpey they're an artist's dream.

Pros: Accents and Premo Sculpey both share many of the same characteristics. Professional artists that are creating gallery quality work value its durability, ability to hold fine detail, pigment density, wide color choice and mixability. Use it to create anything from jewelry and sculpture to furniture veneers. 

The high mica content in the metallics like the golds, copper and bronze produce a strong directional shine for holographic and embossed effects. I used it in the background behind the colorful eel to the right. The fish schoool pattern is actually an absolutely flat surface that uses the microscopic mica flakes within Premo Accents Gold to create the 'raised' fish pattern. The position of the fish also shift just slightly depending upon where the light is coming from and where the viewer is standing.

Directions for advanced techniques like millefiori, mokume gane and extrusions often call for Premo Accents. And for creating fool the eye imitations of many exotic stones like opal, agate and even ivory it's consistently a top choice.

Cons: Accents is slightly stiffer and more difficult to condition than Original or Sculpey III. But once it is conditioned it will remain in prime workable state for about a week. After that I'd suggest re-conditioning.

Particles in the Glitter and Granite products may produce dragging marks in mokume gane and when you're cutting canes. 

These polyclays are a bit stickier than older formulations of Premo. You may need to leech some of the plasticizers out to make it more suitable for caning and millefiori. To do this roll the package into a sheet using the thickest setting on your pasta machine. Then place the clay between pieces of copy paper. After several hours you'll see what looks like a grease spot on the paper under the polymer. Remove the paper and then use the leeched clay or store it for later use.

Are your Premo Accents causing trouble? Just ask and we'll help. Or leave a tip and teach us all something new!