How to Make Cold Porcelain Without Cooking

Alternative recipe from Heidy Jackson for making cold porcelain modeling paste the easy way ....No stove, No microwave, No Vaseline, No glycerin!!

CP Tips from Marisol

Marisol Romero

What is Cold Porcelain?  Cold Porcelain (CP) is a modeling compound that is composed of white glue and cornstarch.  The recipe for cold porcelain is quite simple and it can be made or home or purchased commercially.   CP is a material that can be modeled in small volumes and large. Its characteristics are softness, whiteness and elasticity. CP is known throughout the world, in every region or country, by many different names.  Besides Cold Porcelain, it is known as Porcelana Fria, Masa Flexible, Biscuit, and Pasta di Mais among others.

See this page for recipes and how to make Cold Porcelain video. If you make your own dough, keep in mind that, to be of good quality, the ingredients you use should also be good quality.

Marisol Romero is a cold porcelain artist from Argentina, where this medium is very popular. On her website she shares some of her cold porcelain tips.  Below are some of her tips translated to English as best as we can!

Marisol's Cold Porcelain Recipe

Stovetop Method

Cold Porcelain is a "clay" or paste that can be made at home and is composed of white glue and cornstarch.  Cold porcelain is known throughout the world by many different names. It is also known as porcelana fria,  masa flexible,  biscuit, pasta di mais, among others.   It is soft, white and flexible and can be modeled into small figures or large.  Hard and durable when cured.

Cold porcelain requires no baking to cure and air-dries at room temperature.  As it dries, it will lose 15% to 20% of the original volume and this shrinkage must be considered when modeling.

Marisol Romero of  Porcelana Fria Paso a Paso has created the following 2-part video demonstration showing her stovetop method for preparing the cold porcelain paste.   There are many other recipes for cold porcelain, including microwave recipes.  Which one to use depends on your own experience and what you will be making with the cold porcelain. Some recipes are softer, some harder, some more flexible or rigid.    See our Recipes page for a few other recipes and try a few different ones to see which you are most comfortable with.

Cold porcelain recipe...only 3 ingredients!

I found a quick and easy cold porcelain recipe at the Deviant Art Forum, posted by beatus-vir.  This is a microwave recipe and is made from just glue, cornrstarch & lemon. She also shows us how to add color to the cold porcelain paste using oil colors, pastel chalks, acrylic paints and watercolors.
Click here for recipe and mixing tutorial!

(Note: Tutorial is written in both Spanish and English.   I feel pretty sure that where it says "white rubber", it really means "white vinyl glue"  ....that's what happens when computers translate!  LOL)

CP Recipe, Stovetop Method

Today we feature another video demonstration and recipe for making cold porcelain paste at home.  In this video slideshow, Rubina shows us how she prepares cold porcelain on the stovetop!

See a collection of recipes and demos on our "Recipes" page.

What is Cold Porcelain?

One of my first creations
following a Porcelana Fria tutorial.

Because this blog is all about Cold Porcelain, I guess I should have answered this question in first post...but I forgot!  ;-)

Cold Porcelain is a self-hardening, air-dry clay.  Cold Porcelain [CP] is not an actual 'porcelain', but, if a whitener is added to the recipe, the finish becomes opaque and porcelain-like. The 'cold' refers to the fact that it does not have to be baked or fired.

Cold Porcelain  is comprised of cornstarch, glue and other ingredients that are heated together to make a paste.  CP can be purchased as a ready-made paste but can also be made at home fairly inexpensively.

Various recipes for creating the CP paste at home can be found all over the internet and on this blog...see post.  Some recipes heat the paste on stovetop, some in the microwave!    It only takes a few minutes.

CP has a wonderful, soft texture and doesn't need all the pre-conditioning required with polymer clay.    It is a versatile clay;  easy to use and requires few specialized tools (a basic set of inexpensive plastic sculpting tools will do).   With CP, you can create natural-looking flowers, collectable figurines, cake toppers and many decorative items. You can work large or small.  I've seen some very large figures made with CP.

Cold Porcelain clay is relatively new to the USA (but is rapidly growing in popularity).  Currently there's not many commercially-made CP brands available (in USA).    In South America, CP is also known as biscuit, porcelana fria, masa flexible and pasta di mais.  A few websites are beginning to import some of the brands from South America, which makes purchase for US residents a lot easier.

As I said above, we'll be sharing some recipes here, along with tips, tricks and tutorials, so you can make your own CP paste and your own figurines!   See Recipes to Make Your Own Cold Porcelain  for  a few recipes and a video demo.

Recipes to make your own cold porcelain paste

Cold porcelain is an air-drying clay (also called 'paste') ideal for making flowers and figures.  It can be purchased commercially (although hard to find in USA) or can be made at home.   Cold porcelain has a much finer finish than bread dough or even polymer clay.   When making flowers, you can get wafer thin petals.  When making figures, you can use Styrofoam shapes as armatures.


There are many different recipes for cold porcelain but basically it is made with cornstarch, glue, oil and preservatives.   The paste is cooked on the stove or in the microwave for a short time and then kneaded until smooth. 

Hello world!

This blog will be about crafting cute kritters and kids with homemade or purchased cold porcelain paste.  We'll feature cold porcelain recipes and tutorials.   We'll also spotlight artists making some very cute dolls, animals and other cute figures! 


Cold porcelain is extremely popular for sculpting figures and crafting flowers in South America (and a few other countries) but it has only recently made it's way to the USA.   Because of that, most tutorials and other information are in Spanish-language magazines and on Spanish or Portuguese websites.   We're going to do our best to make a great cold porcelain resource for the English-speaking audience.


We'll be focusing on dolls and figures, for the most part.   I know of many websites devoted to clay flowers and I don't want to repeat their efforts....but we'll share some links so you can go take a look!  Let us know what you'd like to see here!