These are just a few tips and tricks we find are best practices to enhance your claymi DIY kit experience and final charm outcomes!

1. When Shaping

• Water is air dry clay’s best friend! Easily smooth out your clay by rubbing your  water:clay mixture to your rough clay. This not only smooths your surfaces, but also acts as an amazing binding process and detailing process!
• Keep your charms small! They get heavy so you don't want it too bulky on your keys and adding weight!
• Smooth out any edges of shapes to avoid unaesthetic finishes with our sculpting tools. Rounded curves always look better on our charms!
• Clay shaping is like 3D painting! There are no mistakes you cannot undo - that's the beauty of it, so have fun!

2. When Building

• Make sure you use the water:clay mixture as glue between two pieces!
• Remember to score two surfaces that are being joined together.
• If you're joining a very small piece to a larger one, and scoring is not practical, make a divot in the larger body so your smaller piece fits in snug, to ensure a better connection and avoid it falling off in the future.
• Smooth smooth smooth the edges of your connections after joining them!
• When attaching your screw eye pin, be very gentle to not heavily deform your clay. Some slight deformation will occur as your clay is still soft, so make sure you re-patch the area up!
• Really dig your screw eye pin into the clay! Make sure everything except the ring is exposed. We recommend adding a little touch of clay over the ring base so its “buried” in the clay for a secure fit as it dries.
• Do not attach your keychain / phone charm until the glazing step.
• During the drying process, try to keep the clay upright, and rotate it a couple times so it's not just sitting on one face.
• As your clay dries it may crack. Check in on your clay halfway through the drying process and patch-up any cracks with some more water:clay glue.

3. When Painting

• Before painting, it's optional to dab some rubbing alcohol onto a que tip and dust off the dust on your creations. 
• Use a plyer or tweezers to hold your charms by the screw eye pin when painting
• First paint your creation with at least 2 layers of your color. Only add the next layer when the previous layer has completely dried.
• Always fully wash your brushes in a cup of water before changing colors. Make sure brushes are dry before applying the next color of paint onto the brush.
• At the very end, draw on your Claymi face with a fine quick-dry marker! 

4. When Glazing

• We recommend attaching the keychain/phone charm prior to glazing. This way once you complete glazing, you can hang up your creations as they dry.
• Do NOT place your charms on a surface while the glaze is still wet. Ensure they are hung up. Glaze will stick to other surfaces and ruin your creation.
• Use a plier or tweezers to hold the pieces by the screw eye pin when glazing.
• Apply a generous amount of glaze to coat your charm and give it that professional smooth shine.
• If you have any air bubbles in the glaze, most will disappear as the glaze dries!
• Attach the keychain / phone charm only after the glaze is completely dry.
• Let the glaze dry for at least 12 hours. If still wet, it will be sticky.

And there you have it! Your very own Claymi Charm!