By  J. W. Kennedy (Richmond, VA United States) -You take an equal pinch of putty and hardener and knead them together til the color is even. It has a clay-like consistency and you can mold it to any shape. When soft, the surface is water-soluble so you can wet your fingers and rub it to get a smooth texture. Once cured, it is bone-hard and waterproof. I've found that the actual working time (in a warm Virginia climate) is 30 minutes. After that it starts to get rubbery and stiff; at this point it becomes much harder to work with; it will stick to your fingers & not wash off ... so you have to shape it relatively quickly. The best policy is to mix it in very small amounts; you'll quickly get a feel for how much you can use in 30 minutes. Once the putty is in place & shaped, then you must set the piece aside and wait for the material to harden before you work on it more. It takes 24 hours to get hard enough to sand, but only 6 - 8 hours to be firm enough to pick up without squishing. This is not a material for impatient people, but the "little-bit-at-a-time" workflow makes it ideal for me. Magic-Sculpt sticks to itself really well, so you can add material to pieces that are already hardened, and smooth the new section down seamlessly onto the old. I have tried sculpting with clay and with Sculpey and the results always looked like crap: all lumpy and covered with finger marks ... plus I have experienced the nightmare of having a Sculpey piece slump in the oven ... ghastly! I love Magic-Sculpt because I can achieve a really smooth surface, and I can do much more detailed & elaborate sculptures thanks to the ability to work in sections without worrying about messing up the parts that are already done. Completely cured Magic-Sculpt can be sanded & carved with ease; it behaves beautifully as a reductive sculpting material too! You can paint it, but you'll need to apply a primer designed for plastics first (I discovered that acrylic paint does not adhere well to the Magic-Sculpt surface.)