Faux Cinnabar Polymer Clay Tutorial

Hello dear friends!

It’s been some time since my last post and I’m sorry for this short break. I have to say that I missed all this.

But I have to tell you that I’ve been involved in some projects related to polymer clay and it was a productive period for my clay. For the moment I can’t tell you more about this special project so dear to my heart in which I’m going to take part, but I will, soon…

Furthermore I was very happy to see that my free course on 11 Ways to Make and Use Molds with Clay has been very appreciated and I’ve got amazing feedback from the clayers that took my class. Yay!

Here’s the link to the class in case you haven’t taken the class yet and you’d some some inspiration for your clay: https://learnpolymerclay.com/ Just so you know it, it’s more than just molds and how to use them, it’s also about how to make your tools for clay, how to make texture plates, stamps, texture rollers and much more.

While I’m working on my second polymer clay class, I really wanted to continue my Youtube tutorials and get back on track. And get back to the blogging world as well. I continued to keep an eye on my friends postings and this gave me the desire to post more inspiration for clayers.

So, I have prepared a short and easy tutorial centered around faux cinnabar. This bead embroidered neck piece is one of my first pieces in which I used polymer clay components to make a statement bead embroidered piece.

I discovered polymer clay, a lot of years ago, while I was looking for a solution to make my own beads for my bead embroidered pieces. And I totally loved the freedom that I had to make my own components in the shape, color and size that I wanted. And I’ve been a polymer clay lover ever since.

Back to the tutorial. This is a simple technique, but I think that it has great potential. I love white clay, because you can color it and inks are a great way to color the clay.

Furthermore, I wanted to show you a simple and easy way to emboss a simple pattern into clay. We might not have all the stamps and texture plates that we’d want to have so this simple technique would allow you to get an embossed design just like when using stamps or other texturing tools.

So, I have properly conditioned the clay. Keep baby wipes near to clean the white clay, if necessary. In some spots I had to use my craft knife to remove some impurities from the white clay.

I passed the clay through a medium setting of my pasta machine, then I cut two rectangles of the same size. I am going to use a paper template that I’ve drawn and that will allow me to cut the shape and the size that I want for my faux cinnabar bead.

I put the rectangles one on top of the other and I pressed them together by applying a texture plate (Lisa Pavelka’s Bloomin’ Texture plate). This is going to be the back of the bead, in fact.

I used my paper template to cut the desired shape using my flexible blade.

Then I flipped the bead over. I printed a free image that represents a simplified version of a Chinese Symbol (the Longevity symbol) that you can download here together with the process steps and the paper template.

faux-cinnabar-6Download

I put this image on top of the clay and I used my dotting tools to impress this pattern into the clay. I continued outlining these lines to achieve an embossed design.

I used a toothbrush to texture the area all around the Chinese symbol.

I used a dotting tool (you can also use a toothpick) to make a biscuit-like margin for my bead.

Then I took a piece of parchment paper and I applied it on top of my working area. You might want to use gloves when working with inks. I was very careful and I managed not to have ink all over my fingers (this time).

I applied ink directly from the bottle by pressing from time to time on the bottle. Be aware of the fact that the more ink you apply, the darker the color. I applied ink on the margins of the bead as well.

I let the ink dry, then I used my blade to flip it on the other side and color the back as well.

Let it dry again and then bake the piece for 40 minutes in the preheated oven at the temperature recommended by the polymer clay manufacturer. (As I make my pieces in one baking, whenever possible, I always bake my pieces on parchment paper to make sure that I won’t get a glassy look on the back of the pieces).

That’s it!

I hope that you’ll like this easy tutorial and that it will inspire you to create more using clay.

Happy claying!

Mihaela

faux-cinnabar-4Download

Advertisement