My polymer clay earrings turned into sad pancakes, fix or restart?

I was at my kitchen table in Portland trying to make these cute cactus earrings for a friend's birthday. I followed the package directions for baking, 275 degrees for 30 minutes, but I guess my oven runs hot because they came out flat and kinda melted into blobs. The colors blended into a muddy green mess. I spent 2 hours shaping them and now I'm not sure if I should try to sand them down and repaint, or just scrap them and start over with fresh clay. My instinct says restart because the shape is toast, but repainting would save time. Has anyone successfully saved a meltdown like this, or am I just wasting more effort?

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ray_mitchell19d ago

Toss them and start fresh, because trying to sand and repaint melted clay is like putting makeup on a bruised banana, it just draws more attention to the damage underneath. I've noticed this pattern with a lot of DIY stuff, where the "fix it" route ends up eating more hours than a clean restart ever would, and you still end up with something you're not happy with. Two hours of shaping stings, but two more hours of sanding and painting something that's already the wrong shape stings way worse. Get an oven thermometer for like 8 bucks too, because a hot oven will wreck every batch you make, not just this one.

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