A Polymer Clay Tutorial: A Very Simple Pair of Flower Earrings

Hello, Donna Cato here. Welcome to my studio, welcome to my channel, and welcome to this little class. Now this is just a simple little pair of earrings that we're going to be making today. You know, probably perfect for a last minute gift maybe. Anyway, I hope you like it. Now I made flowers, but of course you don't have to make flowers. You can use a cane slice, you can use something else that you have and you like. But I decided to make little flowers. So quite simple, and that is today's class. So let's get started. Okay, so our little flower is going to start as a skinner blend that I just fished out of my clay box. Now this is copper. Look, it's very old. I don't know when I made it. And then this is sort of a gold, but it looks to have a lot of yellow, extra yellow in it. Anyway, I like this blend very much. What I'm going to do is I'm just going to take my skinner blend and I am going to turn this into a bullseye. Yeah, this is easy stuff. Yeah, this guy's pretty old. I wonder when I made it. I wonder what I made it for. Oh, maybe I made it for mud clock canes. I can't remember. I have a lot of old clay around here, my friends. Very old. Okay, we're getting there. I think this will be very pretty. Okay, so let us roll this through the pasta machine. I'm going to go through one, then I think through three, and then maybe through five. One, one, one, three, three. Let's go through five. I like those odd numbers. It's getting very long. Don't pick up any schmutz, please. Don't pick up any more schmutz. I have plenty of schmutz. I'm just going to cut a bit off the end just to straighten it up. And then roll it up very, very tightly. Now, is this thin enough? Setting number five, am I going to see the layers as I'm rolling? I might. I'm going to leave it anyway, but let's just be aware. The thinner this sheet is, the less likely it is you're going to see the revolutions as you roll. Okay, so if you don't want to see them at all, you're going to roll this sheet very thin, probably thinner than five. Okay. Get back here. Am I rolling crooked or is the sheet kind of crooked? All right, so let's see what we've got now. I'm going to make this bigger around because if there's no pattern, you really can do this. Technically, this is a cane, right? Because the same image, it may just be a Skinner blend bullseye, but it is running through the length. So technically, we've got a cane here. Let me just take a cut off the end. And see, I do see the revolutions right there. Does it bother me? No, not at all. I kind of like it, actually. I do. I do. Okay, so now that this is set, let me set up the rest. Okay, so I drew, Louie, please. I drew a little flower on some parchment, and that's going to be my pattern. Now, these guys are actually bath bombs. Oops. They're to make bath bombs. They'd be better if there was no flat spot, but I'm going to live with the flat spot. Maybe I'll even take advantage of that little tiny flat spot. All right, so what I have to do now is I have to cut off a slice here, and then I'm going to flatten it out and spread it out so that it is this big. Okay, I don't know exactly how much I need, so I'm going to start out maybe there. And this will also, it's not going to be the same for you because it depends on how big this is. Now, mine is measuring, oh, an inch and an eighth, maybe something like that. Now, what I will do is make it as thin as it needs to be to get that big. Okay. Oops. So, let's just start to spread it out. And I could take it to my pasta machine, but I have a lot more control just rolling it by hand than I do if I just stick it through my pasta machine. You guys understand. I'm sitting so far back today. I think I will move forward. Maybe my hands will stay under my camera if I move a bit forward. Okay, come on, come on. You can do it. You can do it. Big enough, almost. Now, it's a little bit thicker on this side than on the other. Does that matter? Not really sure, but I suspect not. I'm gonna say I suspect not. I would like it thin though. I would like it thin because I don't want it to be heavy. I haven't decided which finding I'm gonna use yet for this. There, that's good. Let's do the same here. Take my fingers and use my fingers just to pull it out a bit every now and then. I think I have a little bit more clay in this piece. Let me move that aside. I'm afraid I'm just gonna roll over the top of it. It would not be the first time that ever happened in this house. I don't do many flowers. I mean, I do flower canes, and I like that painting with canes thing, but as far as flowers, flowers go, I really don't. Now, you see, this is still thicker than this. It's bigger. It's thicker. Now, I think I am going to cut one more and do it, and then the two that are closest or more closely matched are the ones I'll use because I think they're just a bit too different. I can always take the extra one and turn it into a pendant too, so it's not as if it's going to go to waste, right? All right, let's take a look. Definitely, these two are more similar, so the larger one will become something else. You see, in a situation like this, it's not worth trying to make two pieces that are really so different match, and I think if you try this, you can be pretty well guaranteed you will have two that are closer. Okay, so let us take, I'm just going to put it on here temporarily, and I sort of cleaned it. Okay, do you see how I think that this spiral in the center is actually smaller? You can see it very well here. See how large that is? See, it's a little bit smaller here. Maybe you can't. Maybe it's just my imagination because it was just my imagination, but I don't think so. Now, if you were going to make lots and lots of these, you'd probably want to make yourself a little clay template or something. In other words, roll a very thin sheet of clay, could be scrap, and then make yourself a template so that you can reproduce this over and over more than a few times. Now, I'm going to take the pencil side and turn it over, kind of put it on here, and just rub a bit to transfer the pencil marks, and this is the back side of the piece. And there, you see I transferred the pencil marks. I should be able to follow those as I cut. Now, I will do the same thing on this side. These are a little bit thick. Now, once I cut them, then perhaps I will thin them out further. There, so now I have transferred the marks, and I will now cut. I'm going to take a nice scalpel. This is the scalpel that I prefer. It comes to a very sharp point, like so. They make them on all different, you know, blades. So, let us take and cut the flowers, like so. So, you don't, you guys don't have to watch me. I will, you know, the important thing when you're doing something like this is ensuring that the tile you're on will freely move against your work surface so it doesn't get stuck. Okay, so those two I will finish. All right, so I cut them out. Now, I'm going to take them off, like so. And, you know, they seem a little thick to me. They do. They just, they even look a little thick. I don't, I'm not a fan of that. So, I'm gonna thin the edges out so they don't look quite so clunky. Now, the goal here is to make something that's nice looking that you're going to be able to make fairly quickly without tons and tons of preparation. You're not going to have to make a fancy cane or anything like that to get it done, but you will have something that looks good and that, you know, whoever you give it to is going to be very proud to wear, right? Little things like this help. Now, what will also help, in my opinion, is texture. See, I have to do the same thing to these. And so, I am going to texture the front and ordinarily I would back these with another color, maybe black, something like that, but I'm not going to because that extra backing is going to make it thicker as well. I really do not want to make these thicker. I don't want them to be heavier or thicker. Okay, I wonder when I made this. This clay is very soft and the cane, that Skinner Blend Plug was quite old, so I don't know when I made it. I don't even remember what I made it for. If you could see all the stuff I have, you'd understand why. All right, so let us take this guy and just texture. Okay, a little texture. It looks like a cookie. Yeah, you look like a cookie. What am I doing here? Is there some like cookies. All right, so I'm going to take the center and put it on that flat part. I am. I'm going to utilize the flat part. Try to get it right there in the middle. Is that good? I'm gonna do it and lightly, just lightly press the petals down in place. I don't necessarily want to squash them down. I just want them to stick so I get a nice arc and a nice curve in the flowers. Now, see this black back with all the pencil? I'll just sand that. No problem. Just sand it. Okay, so let me get this guy centered, I hope. Do the same thing. Yeah, I bought these on Amazon, bath bomb things, and they were dirt cheap. I mean, I think I bought like a dozen for, you know, five dollars or something. Maybe one day I'll make bath bombs. No, I don't think so. All right, so these two will go in the oven. Okay, so basically these are the findings I normally use. This I use a lot. I just dangle something off of it. This is stainless steel. This is stainless steel. This is, I don't know what. I don't know what. It's not sterling silver. It is, I'm not sure where. I don't even know where I got it. Okay, for my purposes, I'm going to use this one, but I'm not going to use it as it is. I really do not like this finding. You know, this hangs down and then you got this going hanging down at the very. I just don't like it, but I need this amount of wire. This is not enough wire here, and this certainly isn't either because the flower is big. All right, so I'm cutting off the end of this guy. Maybe I'll cut here now. I'll just cut the whole thing off. If I make a mistake, I have more. Okay, there we go. Now, it is my plan. It is my plan. Let's say at the end, holding the flower on, I am just going to make a turn like that. And whatever holds it on is going to go over that. Okay, now let me bend this this way. Best laid plans. That's not quite enough. I need a little bit of a neck going this way. So I have to straighten that out a bit. I do. I should have put that bend in later. I just should have left room for it. All right, so maybe this is also quite a large. My pliers are very wide, but I'm going for it like so. So let's say the flower is resting here like that, and then the center, whatever I decide to do, some kind of clay ball or I mean, I don't have, I have to think about it, but I don't think I have anything other than clay that I can make balls from. Okay, which will be fine. Just need something that's going to hold it on. But this is basically, excuse me, what it's going to be. This flower, of course, thicker, is going to go like yet away. And it will freely spin like so. All right, I think it's a good plan personally. Now I do have to make the center. What is the center going to be? Should it be this? What would that look like? That look weird? Should it be just black with something else in the middle? I have to think. I gotta think. And I may, I may, excuse me, I may have to make a couple of things just to see what I like. I don't really plan much in advance. There is a possibility that it could be something like this too, which I actually like quite a bit. This is just a copper rondelle or something. And I did leave that flat spot. This would fit. I like this. Now, if I use this, then perhaps the answer is a simple black ball. Just a simple black ball on the end. Could be. Oops. Yeah, you know what? That's it. I'm going to use this copper thing rather than making a clay thing. Now how big should the ball be? Is that a little big for the ball? Yeah, I think so. So let me determine how big the ball is. Now what I'm going to do, I know that this is the way the finding is going to work. Oops. Like that. What I'm going to do is I'm going to straighten this up. You know, I hesitate to straighten it out. Metal is funny. You can only bend it so many times. I learned that from my father who was a body and fender man. You can only bend it so many times before it becomes brittle and it just snaps. Okay, so this I'm going to set aside because I have a lot of these. I have a lot of these and I rarely use them. Here, I have way more than three. Okay, so let's prepare two of these. Hop them in the oven. Okay, just gonna bend the end of both of them. Yes, metal can only be bent so many times before it just snaps. There you go. There's one. I don't remember where I got the, I think maybe I got this from Fire Mountain Gem. I don't remember. They're quite old. All right, so let's match this size. Let me see if I can roll a little ball that's close to that size. Too small. Too big. I really have to roll this well, make sure there's no air inside. And let us just push that ball right on the end there and snug that clay up around the hook. Okay, now perhaps I should have put a little poly paste in there, but I will simply do my best. I'm gonna do it again. Okay. Okay, let me put a little hole in. Is this round? I don't even think I started with a round ball. I guess it would help to start out with something round. Now pierce a bit of a hole in, then take your poly paste, come here, come here, you fill the eye, push it into the hole, and gently, gently press the clay around the bottom. That's better, I think. Holy moly. Well, I thought it was better. Okay, one down. Now these are gonna go in the oven. I want to get these cured and I want to get them cured hard. So much lint. My life, my life is dog fur and cat fur and lint. I'm just lucky my fish don't shed. Okay, I love my fish. I love them. Okay, there we go. Okay, just, I'm so messy. Okay, these are going in the oven. I will be back. Okay, so they are cured. They're cute. Cute. So I'm gonna take my arbor net, this I think is P180, and just sand, sand the pencil off. It's not gonna take long to do, like so. Now, I won't make you watch me do that. It's kind of boring and you just shouldn't have to do that. Now, one thing I should have done when the clay was raw was just simply punch a hole in the middle like that, because I need a hole. Since I didn't do that, I am left to drill, which isn't a terribly horrible thing to have to do, but I missed an opportunity to be a little more efficient about it. Okay, so let us drill. Where's my fancy? This thing. I love this thing. This is a drill I got from Amazon, and all you do is that. It has a spring, and you just pull the spring down. When you pull the spring down, this rotates. Okay, all right, and you know what? I don't think I need anything larger than that. Let's run a little test. I don't need a hole that's bigger than that at all. That's fine. All right, so after I have sanded the backs of these, I will be back. I have sanded the back of both of the flowers. You can see how scratched up it is. The auburnette's very coarse. That's one of the reasons why it's so great, because it sands things down so quickly, but it does have a like that. Well, what I do is I just take Nivea Cream, and I just rub it right on that sanded area, and it penetrates. It sinks into the clay, and it really minimizes the look of all those scratches. This was done before, oh, I'd say 15-20 minutes ago, and then this I just did, so it'll develop a more matte finish, but yeah, I really like it. I like Nivea better for clay than for my hands, although my hands could use some help. Oh, well. All right, these are out, and look, the heating. I cured it at 300 degrees. It seems to have altered, pardon me, the color just a bit. I guess I've not done that before. All right, so let's string these on. So while it's more or less straight, I'm going to put my spacer bead on, put the flower on, and you know, I think I'm going to put another spacer bead in the back, like so. You can see. Now I am going to take the wire, and I am going to turn it up like so, and there's a cute little flower. It's cute, really cute. Okay, and couldn't be simpler. Couldn't be simpler. Now, if you don't fancy flowers, you could, of course, pick maybe a disc, maybe a cane, some nice cane you have, kaleidoscope or something. Anyway, the same basic strategy can be employed for making very simple earrings, like so. Now, I'm not sure this will come off. The hole is pretty big. Yeah, see, it comes off. So I'm pretty sure. Let's just try. Okay, this will come off as well. So I think I'm going to put this down, and then I'm going to find a crimp bead, thread it down, and crimp right here to keep everything together so it doesn't come off. Okay, I will be back with the crimp bead. So unfortunately, I have scoured my studio for crimp beads, and all I have are these little tiny ones, teeny teeny tiny ones, and basically they're too tiny to do the job. So temporarily, I've just put an earring stopper on, and that will hold it. But definitely, if you're going to make these to give away, you're going to need like a larger crimp bead. All I have are these little teeny, see this? These are too small. If I take that, thread this on, and crimp it, it will not hold. Ask me how I know. I know, it doesn't hold. So I'm just going to use these little stoppers that I happen to have all over the place. But you know, they work quite well. They will hold right there. Okay, you guys probably have the right size crimp beads, unlike me. So here you have it. Very simple little earrings, very sweet. You know how they're done, so you know that you can take other things, other cane slices, whatever, and use the same strategy and make very simple little earrings. So this is the end of class. We made these earrings. Quite simple, I think you'll agree. Now, I did not have, I didn't have crimp beads big enough, so I used these. But you know what? These, if you use these, you can make them interchangeable. You can make other things that can be threaded on. So that's there, there is that. Yeah. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you use the technique. I hope you make lots of flowers, or whatever you choose to, because certainly you do not have to make flowers using this technique. Okay, so that's it. I want to thank you. Thank you very much. Thanks for your support. And yeah, so until we meet again, I'm Donna Cato, signing off. Bye.