Christmas Pud Necklace Tutorial

Phew, this autumn has been crazy. I've done my first few craft faires, juggled through a few shops, sold a ton on Etsy thanks to the new credit card payment system, and have been generally working my little behind off!

I'm behind on non-CC content, and one of the first things I knew I wanted to do for you guys was a tutorial, so here's one I've had planned for a while- Christmas puds.

This tutorial is also a companion to my Christmas Pud Necklace kits, so anyone buying those looking for a photo tutorial, you're in the right place!

This tutorial can be used to make a variety of different pud things, simply scale to the desired size as needed. In these photos, I make a chunk 1" pud for a pendant.

I have made my puds a few different colours over the year, but I've found a roughly 2:1 ratio of brown to red clay looks the best. If you only have a small bit of red clay (from the kit, etc), pinch off a pea-sized piece of red clay and leave it to the side- you’ll need this later! Blend the remaining red clay with all of the brown clay to make the body of your pud.

Roll the red-brown clay into a ball. Texture it with a toothbrush, or by rolling it on a piece of low-grit sandpaper. Set aside.

 

Condition and roll out/flatten some white clay.  Shape to a irregular round shape (think ‘splat’) or cut it to shape with a craft knife. I was making several puds at once here, so I have three 'splats' cut out. Make them as big or as small as you like.

Soften the edges with your fingers - once satisfied, place the clay on top of the red-brown pud base. Gently push it into place, working around the edge of the 'splat' in a circle.

Blend green and black clay together. NOTE: Start by blending just a VERY TINY bit of black clay and add more in tiny bits as needed, depending on how dark you want your holly leaves to be. You really will need almost no black clay to start, and none if you prefer a bright green.

Thinly roll out the dark green clay and cut two holly leaves. Cut a rectangle shape, and then slowly notch the ends and sides until you are happy with the shape. Gently scratch a line down the middle of the leaf for detail.

Place your holly leaves on top of the white ‘cream’. You can choose to either have them lie flat of give them a bit of lift.

Condition another small piece of red clay, and make three holly berries to place between the holly leaves! The easiest way to get them all the same size is to roll out a long skinny snake of clay and cut equal sized pieces from it before finishing the pieces into a better spherical shape.

Once your berries are placed, decide how you want the pud to hang, and use a sharp needle to poke a hole. I put mine in at a slight angle so the pendants show off the holly a bit better.

You can also slice one pud into two before adding the holly and berries to make two pud halves. These work great for post earrings and brooches.

Bake according to packaging instructions (110 degrees C for 30 minutes for FIMO) and varnish if desired, and you have a great little necklace that will be the perfect addition to your Christmas jumper! 

To buy a kit for this, send me a message on Facebook or give me a tweet! Is there anything else you'd like to know how to make? Any other kits you'd like available? Let me know!

July in review

Don't you love finding little 'treasures'? I came here thinking I'd post a different entry and found this one left unposted! So, without further ado- a quick roundup of what I worked on in July (besides a large string of Crafty Creatives makes, of course!)

School in the UK ended in July, so apples were in order- I made these big chunky apple pendants and some half-apple brooches, which went down well with the teachers!

A few bulk orders for July as well- first up was this big pile of charms and keyrings for a school fete- the school's emblem is some oak leaves and acorns with a cross, and the children loved them.

I also made these cute badger earrings (and some charms for bracelets) for the North East Essex Badger Group! They were so so teeny!

Technically I made these starfish last winter, but I only re-found them this summer and turned them into earrings and this tri-pendant necklace. 

Now this was a fun commission. A nice chunky pendant, I made the outside of the box with some layered red and white clay, and carefully shaped each piece of popcorn as it went 'in' the box!

And on the non-foody side of commissions, this little sun pendant went to a little girl who I hoped loved it just as much as mine did!

These, along with pandora-style charms, were another new idea for the month. Pearlescent clays and stamps made some pretty cute pendants!

I also had a request for 'just a pear'- no jewelry findings, just the little pear. I couldn't decide on a size, so I sent both!

I did a few other things, which will be viewable in my shop once my little break is over- and this month has already been very productive!

I'll leave you with the goal and movie/book pages for both June and July- I'll be back on Monday with a quick and easy but fun tutorial!

Tutorial: polymer clay pretzel necklace

Using pastels to colour polymer clay is something that I've seen done a lot but never tried. I tried it recently with some burger charms and saw good results, so I thought I'd incorporate it into this month's tutorial- pretzels!

For this you'll need only a small amount of clay (I used Fimo Soft #7 caramel, lightened a bit with white), some sienna pastel, and, if you have it, glass sugar! 

Make a long 'snake' of clay- thicker if you want a soft chewy-looking pretzel, and thinner if you want a crunchy-looking pretzel!

Make a 'U' shape with the snake, and then bring the tops of the loops back down onto the bottom of the 'U', crossing over each other. Don't worry if it's not a perfect shape as you can fix it later. Very carefully flip the pretzel over, using a tissue blade if you want to, and trim the ends as long or as short as you like. If you want your pretzel to look softer, gently press down on the places where the clay meets, otherwise just give them a quick touch to make sure it all holds together. Reshape the pretzel now if it's not quite how you want it.

Here's the fun part. Using a craft knife, scrape the top of the pastel chalk, leaving some dust. Pick it up with a paint brush, being careful not to take too much at once.

Very gently apply it to the pretzel. The pretzel looks more real if you don't cover it too thickly or too evenly, so don't worry about it too much. Keep a piece of clay from the scraps next to you as you do it- I found this helped me gauge how dark my pretzel was going, as it was hard to tell sometimes!

You can see the change in the colour here- I did four pretzels and this was the darkest one. 

Leave the back of the pretzel un-chalked- if you have bits of unwanted chalk dust clinging to the back, it's easiest to scrape or sand them off after the clay has baked, or you may risk smearing it around more than before! Bake your clay now.

If you want your pretzels to look salty, get some of this. It's fake salt/sugar for crafts, made from glass so it doesn't distort when baked with polymer clay. I found mine cheaply on Etsy. A little goes a LONG way.

Varnish the pretzels, and as soon as you varnish the tops, sprinkle a little bit of the craft salt on top so it sticks to the wet varnish. Let it dry, and then add another thin layer of varnish to help secure the salt so it won't brush off when worn.

I liked my fat soft pretzels better when I was doing the first steps, but when finished this skinny pretzel was by far my favourite. Once the varnish has dried, all you need to do is find a big enough jump ring to go around one of the loops of the pretzel, and it's ready for a chain!

These were very quick and easy to make, and just look how CUTE the necklace is! If you can't find craft sugar, you could probably also make salt by grating a piece of baked translucent clay, but it won't be quite as translucent as this glass sugar.

I have a few tutorials to catch up on- so if you'd like to see me attempt anything new or show you how I do something, please let me know! <3

Update- my busy workspace!

It is probably not a surprise to learn that I am not a very organised person. Oh, I don't tend to forget about my obligations, but it would be a lot easier if I could learn to somehow put them in some sort of order! I love diaries, I'm just terrible at using them.

Anyway, sometime last fall I was messing around and I made some starfish!

At the time I thought I'd keep them until summer came back around because they weren't very wintery! Well suffice it to say, I forgot about them.

This is my tub of spare charms and things that haven't been made into anything (the bag is full of unvarnished stuff). I was sorting through and found all my starfish, so hopefully I'll actually get them up and listed because OOPS!

This is the current state of the back of my work area. The worst it's been for a while, to be sure. I have a bunch of little commissions on the books right now- not huge jobs, but for some reason I've pulled out everything I need for all of them! Ha! Also pictured are random things I've used in the past few days for other non-clay crafts, and confusingly a pot of Lush. Would someone like to come organise me?

But anyway, as I mentioned, I have lots of little commissions to do right now, and some of them will be good for tutorials. I'm going to be playing with mica shift, and if it goes well I will be sure to share the results.

<3

June in Review

Why is it that the first week of the month always gets away from me so quickly? I barely have time to adjust to it being a new month before it's all over, it seems! As it is, I debated posting my monthly goal page for June and decided not to as there are a few carry-over goals that will spoil some things I have to make this month! I'll post both June and July pages in August, and instead show you what I *did* get around to making and doing this month.

The big theme of June was getting ready for the opening of a new crafty shop local to me- Crafty Mums. I've been lucky enough to secure a shelf in this cute little shop and am hopeful for lots of sales and success! There are some great things in the shop and some great ladies crafting their butts off to fill it.

My shelf at the shop- the displays I had didn't quite work so I ended up making this one overnight! I have a good idea for a better display and I'm just looking for the right materials to make it with- I have almost all of it collected up and will give you guys an updated picture when it's done. 

And of course, I left you with a bit of a teaser of what was coming next- here's my completed Wimbledon necklace! These were really satisfying to complete as they had so much to them and ended up looking pretty much just how I wanted them to. 

Summer also means my fruit things come out again and I've made a few new things this year, plus adding some posts to my strawberries! The grapes were so much fun to make.

A new fruit that I'd hoped to have ready this month but couldn't quite get - dragonfruit! This slice pendant captured the spirit of the dragonfruit, but I am not quite happy with them yet. Maybe by next month I'll be posting some pieces I'm truly proud of, because I really love the look and colours of dragonfruit.

I also made a bunch of twisty marshmallow things and they've been a hit so far! Getting them smooth and 'perfect' was actually harder than it initially seemed it would be.

I also finally made some earrings and pendants with my spade canes from a few months back. I think they look quite cute. They're over at my sister shop, JustPlainAwesome.

And finally, not really a new item, but I made some bigger cookie pendants and they've convinced me to go even bigger. Little and dainty is good, but I think some big chunky pendants are in store, very soon.

It's always nice to look back on a month and feel like I got some things done and I'm glad I'm able to do that for June! I also was able to cross off some of my 2013 goals, and am going to be crossing off even more this weekend. I still have some catching up to do on my tutorials, so if you're eager to see any in specific let me know in the comments.

<3 S