Cute, tiny things for Halloween. Made by the talented polymer clayers of Etsy:
Pumpkin Creature Figurine by PlayfulPixieCreation |
Halloween Brownie Minis by KatydidMiniatures |
Pumpkin Carving Miniature by SaraMadeCreations |
Cornucopia Miniature by RedBearMiniatures |
Here’s a tutorial that has video as well as text from Sculpey. The project is a fabulously blinged out little box by Gretchen Amberg. She calls it a paper clip box but you could tuck any little trinkets into the box. I remember picking a stack of papier maché boxes like this and making some fun boxes with the kids but they were never quite so sparkly as Gretchen’s!
The tutorial shows how to cover surfaces, add mixed media embellishments and fixtures. All super useful clay skills!
Autumn is wrapping up here – most of the leaves have fallen at least – but the colours are still rich and warm and here’s a fabulous way to carry the prettiest foliage of the year a little while longer. The original tutorial is in Russian but here’s a translated version.
The tutorial itself does a basic white antiquing on black clay but I would likely use mica powders on the raw clay with varnish on the cured leaves. If you use a finger tip or a makeup sponge to rub the powders on gently, the veins of the leaf will stay black providing contrast detail. The same if you metallic paints over the cured clay, another option to get great fall colours on your leaf prints.
One of the best bits about polymer clay is how lovely the imitations you can make are: beautiful, realistic, dolls, tasty looking foods, wonderful faux rocks. These gingerbread cookies would make perfect ornaments or decorations for the upcoming holidays. I do a batch of faux gingerbread every year.
The tutorial goes into a fair amount of detail on how to texture, make nice looking sugared gumdrops and icing. My tip, for a sweet smelling touch: as you condition your clay, add a little of the spices used in gingerbread cookies. Not much so you don’t effect the consistency. The scent will stick around for a bit and adds a nice appearance to the clay.
While I work primarily with polymer clay – oven bake or low firing plastic clays – I do also play with air dry clays, both earth and paper based, as well as high fire stoneware clay. And occasionally with fondant. The tools and techniques are similar across the board, especially for decorative fine work.
This spooky tree is made with paperclay (great stuff, I can definitely recommend it) and to do the same tree in polymer clay I would actually use aluminum foil in place of the newspaper for the insides. If you wanted to make your polymer clay version of this with light up eyes, I would build up the aluminum foil armature over a brass tube right from the start. The entire kit for the light would probably be safe to bake (you can bake the structure for flash drives, for example, no issue) but you would want to test that first.
For the texturing on polymer clay I would do it while the clay was uncured but you could certainly do it afterwards with a dremel and a carving tip. Paint your tree as in the tutorial and arrange for your spooky Halloween decor.
These are a few of the spookier or creepier Halloween clay finds on Etsy.
 Spider Web Pendant by BeadsByEarthTones |
 Creepy Tree Sculpture by OffensiveDementia |
 Skull Earrings by EarringsBraceletsEtc |
 Frankenstein Cabochon by graphixoutpost |
And yes, I do like my Halloween stuff.… Read More ...
Truly large items from clay present a challenge. They take a lot of materials but they also require a great deal of curing time and it’s hard to be sure that every section has cured enough. You get around this by using armatures in things, stuff like aluminum foil or wire. Either way, large items, such as larger beads can be heavy especially in quantity.
Making large, hollow objects to save on weight, cure time and materials presents another issue. Here’s a method to create large, hollow beads using a wash out core. The tutorial uses sugar but I’ve found cornstarch packing peanuts work well and gummy dough made from cornstarch and water works fine as well.
I’m a fan of penguin things and tend to make penguin ornaments for my Christmas shows. Here’s a cute penguin figurine that you could easily do as an ornament. The video is great, detailed and the figures are very fun and well done looking. Deb has a whole pile of these videos on her YouTube channel and you should take a look if making polymer clay figures is your thing.
Last week I got to hang out with the local Cubs – the younger Scouts. We made clay things of course. I started them off with Jack O Lanterns and encouraged them to go from there and make little scrap clay monsters. We did end up with a lot of odes to Minecraft critters.
I dug up the monster work of some talented polymer clay artists to show off and maybe get some of you to crank out your own clay creatures:
Owl by Kathndolls | The Fantastic Four by SkullMonkey548 | JooJooLand Monsters by Afsaneh Tajvidi | Count Cthulhu by Marc Green
Here’s a last minute fun project for kids or family. The clay is simple sculpting and suitable for children.
You could make this a fridge tic tac toe game by adding magnets to the bases of the pumpkins and ghosts.… Read More ...
Outside of my art and craft world – which occupies a lot of my life, I admit – I have a technical background and an interest in things science-y. It is definitely one of the reasons that polymer clay appeals to me: the chance to build things, a medium that responds well to experiments, has reliable properties to explore, useful in prototyping.
Turns out it’s also super helpful in the teaching of science and the presentation of lessons or information. Over the years we’ve used it in my daughters school work dioramas and models. This biology student uses a combination of polymer clays and resin to construct a detailed animal cell model. I wish I’d thought of this when we had a similar project in high school biology, it would have been much more fun than the cut away pictures we drew for our version.
Turns out there’s a little more on educational projects with polymer clay. The kids I’ve worked with have always enjoyed the clay even when we snuck in the educational bits. This project is for a mini solar system – which would be very cool as a mobile – and includes a video as well as other methods to make planet models. I’d probably use aluminum foil as the centres of my planets so that I could get a little larger without making the bake times days long.
Of course, mine would be clay and I’d end up with more of a steampunk wiring of planets with gears between them.
This is one of those simple little photo tutorials that abounds on Pinterest. I would use a core of foil for my tree so that the base stuck in better and you saved on clay and curing time. The scissors method for making branches also makes great chive flowers, chrysanthemums, tufts of hair and so on on your sculpted clay pieces. Don’t want cut branches? Attach little nubs of clay beginning at the bottom of the tree shape and attaching one end of the branch or stubby piece of clay to the tree base. Keep adding up the tree until you have enough branches.
Amber of Starless Clay makes fabulous polymer clay filigree – which you can see in her Etsy shop – but she also occasionally writes and shares projects on her blog. This one is a Sutton slice project to make leaf ornaments that would be lovely for Thanksgiving decor or Christmas trees.
The metallic clays add a nice depth and shine to the pieces without having to add a lot of glaze and sparkle additions.
This project uses air dry clay – and she comments not to use oven bake – like Fimo Air. You absolutely COULD use oven bake clay to make this ornament if you were using a glass ornament or an oven safe plastic one. I’ve done hundreds of clay covered ornaments and quite a few have been sculpted, covered critter ones although no octopus yet.
For a slightly lighter weight polymer clay version you could use Soufflé or pluffy or any of the other lower density clays.
If you are having a hard time finding the perfect ornaments for you Christmas tree, then maybe try making your own. These 8 tutorials will give you some great inspiration for making your own custom ornaments to fit into your own holiday décor or to use as a nice homemade gift for someone on your list. Get a start now, and have them done in plenty of time to enjoy for the Christmas season.
1- Angel Ornament from Fave Crafts
2- Clay Ornaments from Pine Feather
3- Christmas Tree from Black Betty’s Lab
4- Santa Head from Craft Bits
5- Cursive Candy Cane Ornaments from Lines Across
6- Let It Snow Ornament from Then She Made
7- Sweet Treats Ornaments from Sculpey
8- Bulb Ornaments from Kater’s Acres
I’m not a big video fan – I do better experimenting on my own or with a book, to go at my own speed – but with the huge, HUGE increase in the number of video tutorials out there the last few I’ve caved and started watching now and then. CraftArtEdu, Donna Kato’s site for crafty educating, has lots of great content. Some of that is polymer clay oriented and some of it is free. The free content is mostly basic materials but it’s always worth having a peek. Basic techniques like Julie Eake’s for reducing large canes make the difference between successful canes and less awesome ones. There’s more videos in the free section for good stuff like making smooth bullseye blends, using molding materials, working with textures and projects for using up scraps.
I admit, I was looking for some tutorials on how to make dogs – canes, sculpture, SOMETHING – in polymer clay when I stumbled across this tutorial for a sculpted lab head. Bonus: labs are my favourite dog breed.
I was looking because I have several cat ornaments. I have tons of pictures of my cats over the years and it has been a while since I’ve had a dog to study and sculpt so a little extra help was needed. I expect there will be at least a few lab ornaments this next holiday show. Thank you purpleluggage!
This is another fondant tutorial (edible air dry clay anyone?) but I’ve made super similar polymer clay bears just like this. To Christmassify your clay bear tuck a jump ring in it’s head while it’s still soft to form a hanging loop. Add a cute winter scarf and toque or little bit of holly. Then cure as you normally do your larger clay pieces and add a hanging cord. Voila! Christmas bear ornaments.
Here’s a whole selection of pendants – dangles for your neck – by talented polymer clay artists on Etsy. The variety is always amazing. I admit I lean towards the sparkly though!
Faux Gemstone Pendant by PebblesnPaint |
Dragon Pendant by Fairmaidencreations |
Floral Pendant by Sweetystuff |
Lavender and White Pendant by Lagneys |