Polymer clay is a plastic type clay that is fired in a home oven. The clay comes in 70 or so colors and is blendable. Personally I use a toster oven to bake my creations unless they are too large to fit into the tiny toster oven. Polyclay is tough when it is thick, the color doesn't fade, and is waterproof. You will notice fingerprints in my creations- THIS IS ON PURPOSE! I believe that fingerprints allows you to know that a real person created the item and that it is not manufactured by machines. Many polclay artists strive to not have fingerprints- but what means more to you 1. a perfect piece that looks like a machine made it or 2. an object with signs of the artist intact?