Wood Thrush Studio - How I Make the Polymer Clay Beads

These are the steps I used in making the "Blue Angel" bead. I started by drawing a picture to guide me in what I wanted the bead to look like on a piece of paper (in this case a paper plate). It is like I am making a big thick picture using different colors of clay to fill in the shapes. I usually make the cane at least 2" thick. You can see that I have got the face, hair and neck in so far - I start from the center and work to the edge. One thing that people don't realize unless you have worked with it is how much time it takes to presoften the clay. I prefer to use "Fimo" brand clay as I think it holds up the best when rolling the cane down, has the most opaque colors, is the strongest and it is the finest textured but it is also the most crumbly and stiff of the different brands of clay to work with - there are hours of time put into preparing the clay before I can even get to this stage of actually building with it.

I have gotten as far as the angel's wings here. A nice thing about using the cane building method is that if you want 2 or more of the same thing you just need to build one large one - extend it out and cut it into sections and you will have exact copys of that first large thing that you built. I am taking advantage of that in that I built only one large wing and now I will extend that out and slice it in half and have the 2 wings I will need for this angel.

In this photo I am starting to extend the cane. I alternate rolling it on the table like this and setting it on its end and squeezing in the sides, alternating ends (that is to keep the ends even). It helps very much to make a good cane if I have made sure all the clay is of equal softness before I start - if not the softer clay will extend faster and the stiffer clay won't move - that would cause distortion in the beads.

The cane is growing in length here - you can see that the ends are not even any more - that will inevitably happen no matter what - the ends are waste clay. Sometimes I use the waste clay to make what I call "Mixup" beads if I like the colors or "Plus" beads if I can still see the picture in it.

In this photo the cane has been rolled down to the size I like to use for most of my beads (7/16" or 11mm - I use a measuring device to insure the cane is as uniform as possible). I use a single edge razor blade to cut the cane into slices for beads (though now I have started to use a "tissue blade" as it is larger and I can get a smoother cut), then I put holes in the beads with a 20 gauge wire paper clip (very low tech). After the holes are in they need to get a final shaping back to round and they are placed on a cookie sheet lined with paper (that keeps them from getting shiny spots when they bake). You can see some of my kids creations near the edge of the cookie sheet. They are baked at 265 degrees F for 40 minutes - the package directions call for 30 minutes but I feel a little more time insures durability of the beads. One cane makes many beads - at least 300 if the cane is 3" in diameter. I try to process and make the beads right away from the cane so it takes about 2 weeks for me to soften the clay, make the cane, slice off, pierce holes, shape the beads and bake them all.