Air-dry clay jewellery

Since joining the local library and Pinterest I have had the urge to try all kind of different crafts. Some have been a success, others not so much, others were okay, but need a bit of practice. I think this venture falls into the latter category.

I used Das air-drying clay to make some pendants. I found some random items around the house for rolling, cutting and creating textures. I found a nifty little set of pokers (no idea what they’re really called, but they poke holes in things) at the hardware store, and I already had some acrylic paint and unused clear nail polish as varnish.

Most of the pendants I painted with a base colour (silver, blue or pink) and when that was dry I painted over with a darker, watered-down colour, which I wiped off with a damp cloth to give the patterns more definition.

I wasn’t thrilled with the results, but the general idea has promise. Some lessons learned:

• Make an effort to roll the clay evenly and cut the edges cleanly.
  My pendants were of varying thicknesses, which isn’t a bid deal unless you want to use them in the same project. I also found some cheap cookie cutters, which I’ll use next time; they should give a bit of a cleaner cut than the piping bag tip I used the first time.
• Make the threading holes bigger, or thread jump rings before they dry because some of the holes just aren’t big enough for jump rings and one of the pendants got a bit smushed around the hole where I tried to put one in.
  The pendants are hard enough, but not very sturdy, so they don’t take a lot of forcing when it comes to threading them.
• I used cheap clear nail polish to varnish them, partly because it’s what I had on hand, and partly because I couldn’t find anything else that seemed suitable. I didn’t like the nail polish much; it is stinky (even a bit after drying), and seems slightly tacky after drying too. I found some hard-drying Mod Podge, which I’ll try next time.
• Try a variety of patterns and don’t be too sad if some don’t work out. I was surprised how much I liked the rain cloud stamp, and how some others (like the key) didn’t work out as well as I’d thought they would.

I’ve made a Tumblr blog to post photos of my craft creations, so feel free to follow that if you’re interested.