Clay for making beads and other small objects
Polymer clay is a versatile material for making beads, charms, and other small craft projects. Clay beading techniques vary from covering a clay cutout with beaded color to making actual beads from the clay. One of the simplest clay beading techniques can create beads with layers of color. Once you learn the basics, you can alter the patterns by cutting and piecing different shapes to create distinctive beads for jewelry designs.
Instructions
Making Clay Beads
1. Soften a square of polymer clay. Flatten it with your palm. Set the designated clay pasta machine on the second thinnest setting. Roll the flattened clay through the pasta machine. This will create a clay sheet with a uniform thickness.
2. Repeat Step 1 with each of the remaining two clay colors. Stack the uniform sheets. Trim the edges with a clay cutter so that the sides of the stack are even.
3. Roll the stack into a snake. Smooth the end seam with your fingers to blend it. Slice the snake into equal sections the desired width of the beads. The color of the clay sheet on top of the stack is now the color at the center of the clay bead. The clay sheet on the bottom of the stack is the color of the outside of the bead. You can use this same technique to make clay beads with as many colors as you like. The more clay stacks you use, the thinner the sheets of clay should be.
4. Place the individual beads onto a cookie sheet covered in tin foil. Pierce the clay beads through the center or through the top with a strip of 22-gauge wire. Be sure to create a hole all the way through each bead with the wire. Remove the wire after making the hole. Alternatively, you can slide each bead over a metal skewer or one long strand of wire and bake them with the wire intact.
5. Bake the beads according to the directions on the clay packaging. Most polymer clay bakes in a preheated oven at 275 degrees Fahrenheit. Depending on the thickness of the clay object, most clay will harden in 20 to 25 minutes. Allow the clay beads to cool.
6. Coat the beads with clay glaze, one side at a time. Allow the glaze to dry completely before flipping the bead and coating the other side.
Beading Clay Objects
7. Make any object using polymer clay. Clay molds and cookie cutters help create clay shapes.
8. Sprinkle microbeads over one side of the clay object. Microbeads are tiny glass beads with no holes. Press the microbeads into the soft clay with an acrylic clay roller or your fingers. Repeat this step on the opposite side of the clay object, if you like. This is one technique of beading clay with microbeads; the other is to glue the beads onto the surface after the clay is hard and cool.
9. Bake the clay according to the package directions. If you covered the clay object with beads, there is no need to add glaze.
