Saturday, July 14, 2007

Polymer Clay Jewellery

You can get some amazing effects with polymer clay, you can marble, add glitter, stamp into it, use foil, the list is endless and is only limited by your own imagination.

Bracelets, pendants, earrings are all easily made. These pieces are made by burnishing the foil onto white clay using a long thin blade, the pieces are then cut to the required shape and mounted on black clay before firing in your oven. The earrings are simply cut offs from the brooch & pendant and rolled, an eye pin has then been inserted to take the earring findings. Pretty cool.

This is my Fire Pendant, I made a flower cane for the bracelet below and this was simply a cut off, squashed and rolled and a hole put in for the cord (reminds me of flames). Simple and effective. Once the piece was fired it was given a coat of polymer clay varnish to seal it.

The bracelet was slightly trickier. A blend of blue and green clay was passed through a pasta maker (to ensure the same thickness), flower & leaf canes were made and thinly sliced to form the petals of the flower. It was then assembled on the blend. To make the tiles thicker it was placed on a rolled out piece of black clay and cut to make the tiles. Smaller versions of the tiles were cut to form the middle sections. The hardest part of the bracelet was putting the holes in the tiles to thread the cord.
This is a very simple and effective pendant. A small piece was rolled and cut to a rough shape. Swirly clips were then placed on the clay and pressed into place, cut sections make up the rest of the pattern, (once the clay is fired these are very secure). I then cut around the swirls to make the shape and pricked holes for decoration. Instead of a hole or a finding to fasten the cord to the piece, the top was stretched slightly and rolled over to meet the main body of the pendant, a simple, easy way to thread the cord.


Watch this space!
















1 comment:

Lynn W. said...

Your Jewellery is stunning Judith! I have some Fimo in my craft room somewhere - I must dig it out now you have inspired me!
Where do you get Polymer Clay varnish from?

Lynn W.