After baking a piece I get flustered on how much I should do to finish it. I ask myself, 'Will it make a significant difference to wet-sand each piece from 400 grit to 1200 grit, polish and varnish it compared to just varnishing it?' I've spent many hours agonising over this and figured the best way to resolve my indecision is by approaching it in a (reasonably) scientific manner. Experiment.

If you are making a pendant where most areas are flat I definitely recommend wet-sanding 400 to 1200 grit, polishing and varnishing. It makes a huge difference and the piece ends up with a certain lustre that you associate with other materials like glass.

However, if you make beads or other rounded objects I recommend you only varnish it. But you have to ensure that the piece is very smooth without indentations and fingerprints.

In case you do not have a mechanical polisher I recommend using a nail buffer. The soft type that usually has a nail file and different sides to buff your nails with.

Tips

• Always keep your sandpaper washed; if you have little particles on it, it scratches the piece
• Don't skip too many grits, for instance, do not sand with a 360 grit and then with a 1200 grit.
• If you sand polymer clay you have to buff it   
• I have not had much success with the Dremal polishing wheels – whenever I use it tends to mark my piece – instead I use a buff that I made out of felt
• Do not apply too much pressure when you sand, it tends to scratch the surface, keep a light touch

Materials

• Floor polish
• Nail buff – any nail buffer will do the trick
• Mechanical buffer – I use a Dremel with a felt tip that I made myself
• Wet/ dry sanding paper with a high grit (400, 600, 800, 1000 and 1200)

Sand paper

I believe you can buy this in any Wal-Mart in the US but I had a lot of problems finding it in the UK initially. The big DIY places do not seem to stock high grit sandpaper. In the end I found some at www.tool-station.co.uk. I've also read that car repair specialist shops stock high grit sandpaper but have not been able to find anything in the area I live.

In Germany I’ve found high grit wet/dry sandpaper in Bauhaus as well as the interior decorating section of the Karstadt.

In South Africa I’ve found it at Builder’s Warehouse as well as specialist paint shops.
 

Varnish

• I used to use Fimo’s varnish – the red cap – which worked well even though it was pretty expensive but they’ve discontinued that range. The one with the blue cap did not give me good results.
• The US sites always recommend Varathane so that seems to be quite easy.
• I bought Johnson’s Klear in the UK. It worked really well for me.
• I have read that "Erdal Glänzer" or "Aldi Stodil" (DroMarkt or Müller stores, Marktkauf) are good substitutes in Germany – but have not been able to pick a bottle up for myself yet.

Please get in touch if you live outside the US or UK I would love to compile a list of materials to use in other countries.

See the table below for the results I got with different sanding and varnishing. I hope the pictures help; it is a bit difficult taking pictures of shiny things as a comparison.

Technique	Picture	Notes
400, 600 grit wet-sand, polish		I can't see much difference between sanding a lot or just once. Admittedly, I might be missing something, but now I won't feel bad if I don't work my way up through all the grits. Instead I can focus on what result I am interested in for a particular piece.
400, 600 grit wet-sand, polish, varnish
400, 600, 1200 polish, varnish
1200 wet-sand, polish, varnish
400, 600, 1200 nail file polish		There was not much difference between wet-sanding and only using the nail file to buff my beads. I would recommend only using the nail buff to polish your beads and then varnish it.
Varnish only		In future I will not be indecisive after baking a piece, if it is easy to sand I will, but for anything else varnishing looks really good.
Hand polish with nail file only		Next time I am on holiday without my tools - I will use a nail file to polish my pieces. Low effort, good results, easy to find and cheap to buy.

Conclusions

For the quickest and easiest result, especially with awkward shapes, varnish your piece. In fact, the best way to do that is to varnish three times. Wait for the varnish to dry each time and then bake it in the oven again for 5-10 minutes according to the clay manufacturer's instructions.

A piece of jewellery is not always about being shiny either. It should provoke a feeling when you wear it. So I like to sand and machine polish some of my more earthy pendants because it feels really nice.

Right. I hope that helped. Please get in touch if you have any comment or ideas.