FAUX CERAMIC ORCHID POLYMER CLAY TUTORIAL

Hello dear friends!

I’m back from a beautiful vacation with my family and I feel energized and invigorated. I’m also back with more inspiration for your work with polymer clay.

Here’s a tutorial to inspire you to use images and templates to make your work with polymer clay easier.

I hope you like orchid flowers because they are going to be my inspiration for this piece. I like orchid flowers very much because they are so beautiful and seem so fragile and in the same time you’ll have them for quite some time if you care for them accordingly.

For this tutorial I used an orchid image that you can download from http://www.LearnPolymerClay.com. Here’s the link to download the image that I’m using in the tutorial. http://learnpolymerclay.com/2019/03/07/faux-ceramic-orchid-polymer-clay-tutorial/

I’m using also a tool that I particularly like, I’m talking about the Donna Kato’s carving tool (I’m not an affiliate or anything, I just like this tool very much).

You can use this technique to make all kinds of flower components. Keep in mind that when carving, you will reveal the color of the layer which is underneath, so you might want to play with this in your design.

After using the image to draw an outline of the orchid, the work gets really easy. You’ll just have to carve using these guidelines.

For this tutorial I totally recommend you to carve into raw polymer clay (it’s far easier than carving into baked clay and you”ll have a beautiful result).

As always, you get to take the creative decisions, if you decide to make a flower component, you get to choose which flower; you can choose different colors for the upper layer and for the bottom layer (keep in mind that you’ll get different results when painting on white polymer clay than when painting on colored polymer clay).
I wanted to add a little bit of color to the design, so I mixed Fimo liquid and Pinata Alcohol inks and used the heat gun to cure the liquid clay and in the end I adored the faux ceramic look of the pieces that are similar to glazed ceramics.

I finished the piece by applying Diamond Glaze (this is a product that works well where I live, but keep in mind that you should try it/or ask other artists from your region about their experiences with Diamond Glaze (I’m not an affiliate).

I’ve used findings with wrapped loops at both ends to attach strings of pearls to the orchid components.

I’ve used these polymer clay components to make a three strand necklace, but of course, you can turn this inspiration into any kind of neck piece or jewelry component.

I hope that you’ll find inspiration in this tutorial to make your work with polymer clay easier by using images and templates.

Happy claying!

Mihaela

Advertisement