I’m having a little fun the last few days finding more veggie and fruit clay pieces – as I try to put together autumn and harvest pieces in my real world claying – and here’s a watermelon cane tutorial that’s a little different than the average.
The tutorial is on a French page – here’s a link to the translated to English version – but the tutorial itself works entirely from the photos if you are at all familiar with caning. Cristalline, the author, has LOTS of tutorials on her blog.
Kellie of MakeItWithMe has a tutorial for these adorable bird houses. She uses Fimo Soft for the project along with a little wire and mini dowels. The results are some cute little houses with springy birds. Yes, I know, autumn is showing it’s face in my part of the world but you could vary the colours on this project to suit whatever season or decor you needed. Right now, little harvest themed houses or pumpkins with little bats on springs might be the most perfect version.
This is the basic pumpkin making tutorial: orange and green clay, a tool to make marks. You can make fabulous little pumpkin beads, pumpkin decor. You can fancy it up by antiquing your pumpkins or turning them into little jack o’ lanterns.
If you decide to make pumpkins larger than 1/2 thick or so – bigger than beads, basically – consider using tightly packed foil for the insides. It’ll reduce how much clay you need and reduce the amount of time you need to bake for.
Making cute decorations for the holidays is one of those perfect clay things to do. And, really, Halloween has a lot of silly possibilities like this mummy. The tutorial by Phoebe Doehring on Sculpey.com makes a sweet little mummy figure. If you need a spookier one, thin and elongate the form a little and make a bit creepier expression in the bandages. Add a little grime with the acrylic paints.
The local bakery makes a nifty flavour-of-the-week batch of cupcakes and macarons each week and the macarons are definitely my daughter’s favourites. Here’s the fun clay version. The tutorial uses eraser clay but you could definitely use any of the other polymer clays for this. If you want to make the delicately pastel colours a lot of the macarons seem to be start with white clay and mix very small amounts (crumbs, seriously) to make the colours. Or go for bright and saturated like these guys.
This falls more into the category of quick tips but hey, it’s a bright idea just the same. Getting her inspiration from a baking recipe that uses the outside of a cupcake tin – minis or full size, I’m not sure – to bake cookie bowls, Ronit made little trinket dishes from clay.
It looks like she used thicker pieces of cane covered clay sheets cut with a circle cutter then formed over the outside of the tin. You could use a little texture on the outside of the piece to give the outside of your finished piece some interest and avoid sanding.
A little selection of wearable pretties from polymer clay artists on Etsy:
 Leafy Cha Cha Bracelet by wilywolverine |
 Pod Flower Earrings by Loveroot |
 Mixed Media Cuff Bracelet by adrianaallenllc |
 Wolf Love Necklace by wcgoods |
Making precision anything with craft materials is sometimes a challenging experience so I always like tips and tricks on how to get great, clean results with fairly basic tools. The pearl and etch tool set from Sculpey are nifty that way. I have dome ended tools (the pearl end on the Sculpey tools) from other sculpting sets but I hadn’t used them to make little dots like this.
The tutorial itself is in Russian. Here’s a link to a translated to English version.
I’ve dabbled in ceramic and air dry clays and I’ve done polymer clay as my day job for years now. Apart from making canes and beads, my favourite item to build is bowls. Little bowls, great soup bowls (from ceramic clay in this case), little trinket dishes from every type of material.
These autumn themed leaf bowls appeal to that bit of me: the poster discusses making the dishes and processing in a kiln but also trying these with air dry clay. They used acrylic clay and varnish for the colouring. You could complete the same piece with polymer clay and either use paint for the veining or mica powders. Cure your leaf shape on a slightly curved oven safe dish such as a large glass bowl and voila, polymer clay leaf bowls. Just think how lovely little dishes with wrapped candies would be for your Thanksgiving decor.
Back when I started doing polymer clay online – in 2002 or so – I found a community going strong at PCC(polymerclaycentral.com) and lots of people who were big or upcoming names in the polymer clay world. I joined swaps where other players were the people who wrote the books I’d seen in the store. It was a great spot for a newbie to get started and I joined lots of swaps and played and talked.
One of the people who always had a bit of advice and a style that appealed was Sarajane Helm. A mixed media artist, Sarajane does miniatures, beads, jewellery, music, costuming, fabric and, lately, lots and lots of digital art. I joined in her mask swaps once or twice and just took a peek at the 2014 ones. She’s also got the 2011 ones on her site. If you haven’t had a chance to see the masks from previous goes… you should, just for the sheer variety. And if you ever have the chance, do participate. It’s a huge, well organized swap with great quality work done. It was intimidating as heck to do but worthwhile.
The picture above are some of the masks, uncured, I put into the 2009 swap.
This isn’t so much a tutorial as a glimpse in how someone else makes their dragons. The step outs start halfway into the process with the initial dragon built up over an aluminum foil core. The body is black clay and the decorative elements are a wonderful rainbow blend of colours.
I would probably do the first part of the build – the initial black body and some of the black detailing – and do an initial curing before I started laying coloured segments on. Black clay smeared onto my coloured pieces or vice versa would make me a little crazy. The final piece uses a good varnish to nice effect.
It’s a little early but if you want unique polymer clay ornaments, the clay artists of Etsy are gearing up. Here’s some of the goods:
Dessert Ornaments by RustiLee |
Eggplant Christmas Ornament by PumpkinTreeLane |
Fox Ornament with Santa Hat by rainabedaina |
Winter Themed Custom Pet Ornament by charmingcreatures |
Alright… I’ve been making ornaments for months and just did my first holiday show of the season so that’s all I can plead when I put out a link to a fun holiday tutorial in October. This tutorial from Rachel of Lines Across is for little cursive candy cane letters. She uses the perfect, simple colours of candy canes to make package decorations and ornaments.
A nice gloss coating gives them a fabulous candy gleam. You could add a tiny thin string of green to your mix (candy canes here often have red white and green). And, if you’d like a minty scent add a little mint extract or mint essential oil to your clay as you condition it. A tiny amount is all it needs. Both will soften your clay so take that into account. The clay with extract will firm back up as it evaporates but the clay with oil will stay soft until baking so bake it up soon after making it. The scent wears off eventually but it’s a nice fun touch.
Just a few polymer clay jewellery pretties to tempt. My colleague has a stack of cute tutorials coming up for others shortly!
Jack O Lantern Necklace by La Nostalgie| Heart Necklace by mrsvic1 | Berry Necklace by Clayberry Jewelry | … Read More ...
Polymer clay is one of the best products to use for jewelry making. It starts out extremely pliable, thus the name of “clay”, allowing you to form it into any shape you choose. It is also very easy to mix with other colors, making the possibilities endless. If you have never made a piece of jewelry from polymer clay, you really need to try at least once. Here are 7 great tutorials to get you into the polymer clay jewelry-making business.
1- DIY Bangles from Delighted Momma
2- Polymer Clay Ombre Necklace from Crafts Tuts Plus
3- Reversible Nature Bead from Sculpey
4- Shaving Foam Beads from Jewelry Polymer Clay Tutorial Heaven
5- Faux Geode Necklace from Mad In Crafts
6- Puzzle Pattern Necklace from Atelier Lucy
7- Polymer Clay Pendant Necklace from DIY Ready
Lianne and Paul of Swirly Designs have put together another really, really neat piece for Sculpey. The tutorial uses Soufflé clay but could be done with another polymer clay. The project is a mixed media piece with all sorts of embellishments and the result is a cutely creepy little wreath decoration. Any of the clay decorations could be used separately as hanging decorations or table decor for your Halloween party.
One of the first things I made when I began poking at my clay was marbled beads. Even then I thought, “Wow, those are like nifty rocks.” Later, I found you really could make faux rocks just about the same way by paying attention to the colours. The addition of small amounts of inclusions – salt for roughness on the outsides, finely ground herbs, glitters, bits of grated clay, sand and such – could really add to the reality. A nice sanding for a smooth river rock or a gritty texture made from salts or the edges of other rocks.
Lucy uses her faux rocks to make a neat little planter for succulents. The use of the bowl as a former for the rocks while they cure is a great idea.
The actual directions are for sugar paste but this is one of those simple little photo tutorials that works equally for modeling in polymer clay. I would draw or paint your jack o’ lantern face on after baking. You could also use little crumbs of black clay to do the embellishments. Sometimes the best decorations are the simplest ones though!
The whole blog-site has a variety of simple sugar paste models that are equally doable in polymer clay. Have a poke around. Canalblogs are typically in French – use translate.google.com if you need to get an English version although this specific tutorial is just a photo step by step.
Janel popped up a tutorial for a trinket dish made with air dry clay. The instructions apply equally well for oven bake clays although I’d use coloured clay and save the paint for the detailing. For the air dry version you can smooth the edges with a damp finger or sand after drying and with polymer… the same.
The bit of detailing with texture and paint in the centre of the flower dish adds a nice touch and you could gear it to the flower – a poppy dish with black dotted centre, a sunflower with the brown face and so on.
After seeing an impressive faux leather piece I went looking for faux leather tutorials and found exactly what I was searching for. This tutorial uses materials most clayers will have on hand and straightforward techniques.
Bonus: the faux looks very … Read More ...