I started off making flowers, using the very decent DIY sugar paste made with Nick Lodge's recipe, bless his soul, and it was a shock for me to realise that DIY CP clay, unlike gumpaste, could never be as good as branded. Not so far. Just a fact. That said, it can come close and be both very useful as well as, well a waste of time and money, depending on your personal requirements, location and the sort of glue you can get hold of.

There are many variations of free CP recipe, floating online, with one of them, a very common Cold Porcelain clay recipe, shared on my Youtube channel, below.

The GLUE is the main, the 'make or break' ingredient of Cold Porcelain. Although all you need is a simple craft glue, they seem to vary vastly, with some cheap ones working a treat and others really not working at all, which can and which can't do the job is often trial and error. There are few very expensive glues that are almost guaranteed to work, mostly American, as well as dedicated glue for making Cold Porcelain but buying them can cost more than buying the branded clay. The other common ingredients are corn flour, some form of non-food oil for elasticity and vinegar or similar to stop it from moulding.

Unfortunately, the flowers made with these free recipes still break and don't make quite as life - like looking petals esp. close up, but they are much sturdier than sugar and the clay itself is very similar to work with to the branded. ( The video recipe I offer in this blog belongs to this category).

If you can't get hold of any branded Cold Porcelain in your country, DIY recipes make it possible, however, and that alone, makes them a godsend, I think. Also, if you get hang of making DIY paste wherever you are, this could be a little money saver over time while you are first learning, as there's particularly much waste then. If possible though, do make sure you try out branded from the start, so you know what you are dealing with.

Two of the less 'aired' issues I find with DIY CP is that sometimes parts made with it dry out of shape, no matter what you do.  It can be even interesting creatively but still, ideally you want to know where it's all going.
Another thing, the ready flowers' long-term behaviour is harder to predict with the DIY Cold Porcelain paste. That said though, testing is your secret little helper and a good habit to get into.  The vast variation in local climates is another very good reason to test clay performance over a period of time - any clay.

Recently, a very talented lady Fahima Khan has developed her own recipe.
I thank my lucky stars for living in a right location and being able to treat myself to using branded CP only, but a friend of mine did make some clay using Fahima's recipe and was kind enough to post it to me: can honestly say that it was far the best DIY recipe I've tried.  The petals it made are flexible, don't break at all and are nicely transparent if a bit on a shiny side for my liking ( then again, think how nice it will look on those clay greedy stems) . I can sort of tell it's a DIY clay...but only just.  This CP recipe is paid, but fairly priced. I don't have any personal experience making it, but loads of CP artists bought it and most seem to have no trouble making the clay with it, though there are some who couldn't it seems. I will leave Fahima's details below. It might be an idea to ask some pre-purchase questions, such as cost of a batch, how available are the ingredients world wide and what happens if the recipe doesn't work for you.

So rounding up, I'd say that while DIY CP is not an ideal solution or something I'd choose to use for commission work or important projects, it does have its place. Just make sure you honestly account for the cost of ingredients and your 'trial and error' time and if you can find no way to source branded clay please don't give up, you will eventually find suitable recipe that works for you, or works just well enough.