ACTIVA Lumina Transluscent Polymer Clay

I'm describing this from my personal experience using this clay. Your milage may vary depending on what you are making and how you use it.- Strengths:- very strong when well pressed and formed. It can be torn apart, but takes a bit of force for the thickness involved.- flexibility is amazing. (when fully cured) I did a strength test on a self made flower petal and bent it about 200+ times before it showed serious cracking. Even then it didn't snap apart. It just showed white stress marks and fine cracks.- dried texture feels like soft vinyl. Can be painted or mixed with paint, sprayed and finished with various finishes. (may make it less flexible because the paint won't flex as well as the clay, but it will still adhere.)- Makes very realistic looking plant life if treated just right.- Depending on the project, there may not be an easy substitute for this clay. (various home made cold porcelain type clays can fit some, but not all features of this clay.)Frustrations (or weaknesses):- more difficult to work with than many clays if sculpting because of below concerns- you need a fresh batch. If you don't get one fresh, then you want to put a moist towel or paper towel in the opened side of the bag and seal it away in a container for a full day.- surface dries very quickly, so you need to take out only so much at a time and leave the rest stored away in a moist container.- tends to crack or split when drying if it is flexed or manipulated with when partially dried.- doesn't want to stick to self and layers can split apart if not fully joined. (but can be forced to with some effort like moistening or altering some clay to make it like paste)- takes longer to cure than polymer clay that has been baked. Expect about 24+ hours depending on thickness. It may seem cured enough earlier to remove from molds, but not fully flexible until the day after. (this is using very thin layers. Thicker layers may take up to a week or two.)Neither good nor bad:- package so far seems to be a ziploc type bag with the clay tightly wrapped in cellophane type plastic. Left like this unused long enough may cause it to slowly dry out. (this is even when ordering directly from the company.)- Dries creamy and cloudy. Light still passes through if thin enough. If you need it whiter, you can mix it with other air drying clays. (I've used things like hearty and delight)- is flexible, so if you need something hard and rigid, this won't be as useful.- if left very moist or wet after fully cured, the clay softens and may be fragile, but then dries out to be firm. I didn't notice any loss to detail. This may or may not mess up any painted jobs that are unsealed. (My piece was unpainted.) Doing this may allow some degree of reshaping, but not to the degree of brand new uncured clay. For that reason, the clay is near waterproof, but water resistant would be more truthful. Yet, this may still be useful if exploited just right.- tends to lay flat when drying. This can be frustrating but worked around by propping up areas. With my projects I found it better to work with this tendency and make flat objects.Some things that helped me use this clay:- Refrigerating between uses is helpful, but not as important. It may be if you have unused clay over a month to use. The paper towels seem more likely to mold than the clay. Then again I tend to use up the clay within a month of opening. If I am not using it so rapidly I store it in the bottom of my fridge where it won't freeze.- Use water sparingly. When overused, at best makes the clay very sticky and hard to use. At worst, separate like eraser shavings on my hands.- Hand lotion on hands also helps delay drying time or restore the clay to some degree better than using water alone.Ideally the less needing to be added, the better.- Mixing with a fluffy type clay yields something easier to work with for sculpting. The fluffy clay (I used Delight) seems more dominant, so mix less of it to the Lumina.Update: I included photos of things I've made with the clay.

I am a gourd artist and like to make interesting things our of gourds. Some of my birdhouses can be pretty elaborate looking like acorns, lighthouses, etc. I have been trying to find an air dry clay that doesn't crack when it dried and that can handle being outside in the weather. I use this stuff to "enhance" features on my gourd birdhouses, like adding window frames or door hearths. Regular air dry clay is not water-proof and it cracks when it dries.This polymer clay is kind of expensive for the small amount you get. The 5-oz. size won't last a long time if you have a big project. For my use, it was plenty for adding a few small features for a lighthouse birdhouse I made for a relative and it left me with enough for a few other projects.This clay is pretty easy to work with. It is not messy and easy to mold with your hands. It needs several hours to set and harden. It also holds paint well. It does not dry really hard but stays slightly flexible. I made my attachments for my birdhouse, molded them to fit the curvy shape of the gourd, then let them dry overnight, painted and glued the pieces where they belonged. They changed shape slightly when drying, but because they stayed slightly flexible, I was able to glue them to the spot I wanted using gorilla glue and pressing the piece in place long enough for the gorilla glue to set and hold it fast in the correct shape.I wish it came in bigger chunks and was not so expensive. But this appears to be pretty much all that is available out there for a waterproof, air dry clay. It did the job for my project and appears to be holding up fine. I gave it 4-stars instead of 5 because of the cost and small amount that you get for the price.

This is my first package of Lumina clay, but I suspect it was partly cured in the package. Compared to the other air-dry polymers I've tried (Modena and Makins) the Lumina I received was dry and rubbery. It's too stiff to stretch (it tears instead) and does not stick to itself well. When I knead and fold it, it doesn't make a homogenous mass but instead remains a series of thinner and thinner layers that don't meld with each other. Adding a little water didn't seem to help much.I'm assuming fresh Lumina clay would be more moist and soft and would be easier to work with, but can't say for sure.In any event the packaging for this clay is insufficient. It was wrapped in a saran-type plastic wrap, then placed (along with the label) in a ziploc plastic bag which did contain some air space. Common sense says that Air-dry clay should be vacuum packed in an airtight plastic or mylar sleeve. Duh.Also, since nobody else mentions this in their reviews, I'll remind users that Lumina Clay inhibits the cure of Platinum Cure (food grade) Silicones. You can still make a silicone mold from a Lumina model, but you'll have to seal the model carefully first with something like a spray-on acrylic or polyurethane.

Love the product. Wish it came in a larger size?

I like it

Good