What is Polymer Clay?

Polymer clay is a type of modeling clay made from vinyl. It’s great for crafting because it stays soft until it’s baked in a regular home oven. It does not dry out, so you can store extra clay to reuse it another day.

You can blend it to create custom colors, sculpt it, or impress it with a variety of textures. After baking, you can sand it, polish it, or paint it.

It’s a very versatile medium. You can sculpt it into miniatures, make ring dishes, roll it into beads, and of course, make earrings and jewelry.

 

Prepping Your Workspace

Polymer clay is generally very safe, but it can stain or damage some surfaces. So, it’s best to protect your table by working on top of a sheet of parchment or wax paper, a metal baking sheet, or a piece of glass.

If you don’t have any of those, you could even tape down a piece of printer paper, and work on top of that.

Before you start, wipe down your table and tools so you don’t get any dust or lint in your clay.

 

Materials

  • polymer clay in various colors
  • earring backs (either posts, hooks, or hoops)
  • jump rings
  • flexible superglue such as Loctite Gel or Gorilla Glue Gel Superglue
  • parchment paper or foil

Tools

  • acrylic rolling pin (Don’t use the same wooden rolling pin that you use with food.)
  • X-Acto, craft knife, or clay slicer
  • clay cutters or cookie cutters
  • toothpick or a large needle
  • flat baking sheet
  • jewelry pliers

Softening Clay and Mixing Colors

Before you start making earrings, you’ll need to condition the polymer clay.

What’s conditioning? It’s the process of kneading the clay to make it softer, more flexible, and easier to shape.

You can condition the clay by rolling and kneading it in your hands. Or, you can run it through a pasta machine a couple of dozen times. You’ll know the clay is well-conditioned when you can easily roll out a long coil and bend it without cracks or rough edges.

Wash your hands (wipe them with baby wipes) in between colors to avoid color mixing.

Take care not to trap air bubbles in your clay while you are kneading and folding it. If you do happen to make air bubbles, simply pop them with a needle or craft knife.

Polymer Clay Ideas

Here are some techniques and ideas for making color designs in your polymer clay slabs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alternative Method for Attaching Earring Backs

The strongest way to attach polymer clay to metal is to create a mechanical attachment between the two pieces. What do I mean by that? You’ll want to encase the pad of the earring post into the raw clay itself.

To do this, position the earring post on the back o the polymer clay piece. Then, add a thin layer of clay on top of the post. Then, bake the clay piece and metal earring back together in the oven. Once the clay is cured, it will harden, and the metal back will not be able to pull out of the clay.