The other day Lisa of Polka Dot Creations wrote about some of her DIY tools she uses in her clay work. I plan on nipping a few of the ideas – like the button hole placer! – and I had used a few others myself, already. She goes on to challenge her readers to show their own.

Well, I’ve done the handles for tools like she has. I have a stack of transparencies I use for measuring skinner blends and cane segments – I’ll put those up as a PDF download one day. I have colour chips. I have templates for covering pens like she does for bracelets. I have a string of ‘beads’ that are the beads made from a specific cutter size on a pasta machine sheet setting – say, a 5/8″ circle cut from my #1 setting on my atlas.

One that I actually took a picture of is a rack I made to help cook items bigger than my beads or that may have texture on them. I’ve never had much luck with fiberfill or cornstarch. The plus side is, I use this rack for drying items I’ve varnished, as well. In my poinsettia ornament post you can see the ornaments on the skewers in the rack. I baked them on it then varnished them there and then baked the varnish on. A very similar, albeit shorter, rack is sold by PolyTools and was the inspiration for mine.

The rack is made from aluminum flashing – essentially, glorified aluminum foil, in the flashing / siding section at your Home Depot, pretty cheap – and I’ve included a really basic how-to for this thing below: Read more