I want to make some gaming pieces - they will be a bit like dominoes or Mah-jongg tiles - I need them to be fairly durable when finished, but I think I need to use polymer clay or something to make them because they need designs impressed or marked into one side, and they’re all different, so I can’t make a mould and cast them.
Anybody got any suggestions for a material? Are there such things as polymer clays that oven-bake to a decent hard (but not too brittle) finish?
I use stuff called Sculpey. You can find it at Michaels or similar kind of craft stores. Easy to use and pretty durable. Not terrible expensive, either.
Sculpey’s not bad. It’s moderately brittle in thin applications, but as long as your tiles are fairly chunky, I’d see no problem.
My husband used Sculpey to make a name tag for his Hogwarts robe Halloween costume (pic) and it broke, but it was pretty thin.
Well, you could make multiple molds out of play-doh (or whatever) and then cast them with dental plaster. But thats probably more work than you want.
Brian
There are brands of polymer clay that are significantly less brittle than Sculpey.
The more widely available are Premo, Fimo, and Cernit.
Premo is the “tougher” version of Sculpey, made by the same company.
Fimo is a stiffer clay, harder to condition, and harder after baking.
Cernit is tough and has a slightly translucent quality after baking and is used in doll making for that reason.
Here’s a link I found about polymer clays. As with all free things on the internet, it’s content and it’s usefulness is not guaranteed, but it may help. I especially like the “bend 5 times” test and the apparently arbitrary scale used to describe each clay’s properties. Is “Tough To Break” better or worse than " Difficult To Break" or “Does Not Break Easily”? 
Still, it’s hands-on testing of several clays, and their properties are explained.
