Tools I work with: the humble pasta machine

Today I wanted to share with you, as part of a series, an insight into the tools I am using for my creations. The first tool I would like to show you is my pasta machine.

I have never made pasta in my life and this one is a high quality Atlas machine – made in Italy, well the Italians invented pasta so surely their machines are the best on the market. I bought this machine a few years ago, and it hasn’t let me down yet. It has nine thickness settings and is very sturdy.

 If you are not familiar with polymer clay I have to explain what this is useful for. Most clay when it comes out of the packet is pretty hard and needs to soften so you can actually work with it. Different brands have different a softness. I have found Premo to be the easiest to condition, Fimo Classic the hardest.I haven’t worked with Kato clay yet, but heard that it’s even harder to condition.

There are different ways to condition clay, you can cut it into manageable slices or pieces and use a small roller and your warm hands, but the best way is to roll your clay through the pasta machine several times. It saves you a lot of time and is less strenuous. A pasta machine gives you different thicknesses of sheets when rolled through, which is important for different designs and techniques.

You can even buy a motor for the machine – something that’s on my wish list. It would also be nice if someone could come up with a self-cleaning machine, because cleaning a pasta machine is really tricky and time consuming. Fimo is notorious for sticking to the rollers. I tend to clean my machine with a skewer – to get the bits out which are trapped inside – and lots of baby wipes to wipe the rollers with. When using Fimo I often clean in between colours and tend to organise my work so that I start with light colours first to avoid colour contamination. Although I have found instructions for taking the machine apart for cleaning I haven’t tried this yet. I worry too much that I can’t get it back together again!

This year I bought a second pasta machine as a spare one. It was a very cheap one from “Jewellery Maker” and buying it was a big mistake. It is flimsy and the first sheets came out dirty. It has not much of a grip. You really get what you pay for. I am using this only for “dirty” clay where colour contamination doesn’t matter. I use dirty clay, also called mud, as cores for my designs.

I hope you enjoyed reading my blog. Please leave a comment if you like, and share it.