How to Make Polymer Clay Jewelry

Making your own beaded jewelry at home can be both easy and fun. Besides being enjoyable, you will end up with a completely unique creation that is entirely your own.

The absolute easiest way to start is to buy all the beads and simply string them together. In this way, you can make an expensive looking piece of jewelry for a mere fraction of the cost. However, if a more unique look is what you are after, actually making the beads yourself is a better option.

The first thing you will need to do is to go to a craft store and purchase some beading wire, the plastic coated kind is the best. Some people say you should start beading with clear elastic beading cord, but I find elastic to be frustrating to use and you can end up with a really bad result.

When you purchase the beading wire, you should get some 'crimp beads', a pair of beading plyers and some sort of clasp. All together, these things may cost you $20-30. This may seem like a lot, when you haven't even gotten your beads yet, but these supplies will make approximately 10 good sized necklaces or 20 to 30 bracelets.

Now that you've got the 'skeleton' of your jewelry, you need to get the rest. At this point, you may have given into temptation and also added several packs of assorted pre-made beads to your shopping cart. That's fine, and you can make a necklace just out of them if you wish.

But if you still want the unique look, you need to find the aisle with the polymer clay. This is not the same as modeling clay. If you purchase ordinary modeling clay, your project will not work. The polymer clay may be difficult to find and there may be anywhere from two or three color choices to a couple dozen.

Make sure to purchase at least red, blue, yellow, black and white. With these as a base, you can make almost any color you want. There are also 'pearl/metalic' and rock colors. A small block of this will cost approximately $3 to $5. One small brick will go a lot further than it looks.

I would suggest buying only a few colors to start with, since you can always go back and purchase more. You could also buy a 'starter kit' with about a dozen different colors in very small amounts. There are also a lot of tools that go along with the polymer clay, but all you need for now is your hands and a toothpick.

After you get your purchases home and unwrap the clay you have purchased, you may notice that it smells a bit funny. This is because it is plastic. Right now, it's very soft plastic.

It will be hard to work it at first, until it has warmed up. You can mix colors together or leave them plain as you manipulate the clay to warm it up.

Once the clay is warm, start shaping them into balls that are about half an inch or just over a centimeter in diameter. When you cook the beads, there will be no shrinkage, so make sure they are the size you want.

If you have pink clay, you could add a little bump for a nose, two little black dots for eyes and little triangles for ears and you would have a pig. Cats can be made in a similar way, except with triangles for noses.

Set the clay aside to cool off a bit before you go poking holes in it. Once it's no longer your body temperature, then you can use a toothpick to poke a hole all the way through. Lay the beads with the holes in them on a foil lined baking sheet and bake according to the directions on the package. Be careful! Don't let your oven get too hot or you will end up with burnt beads! The great thing about polymer clay is that you really can't bake it too much, as long as the temperature is correct.

While your beads are baking, cut off a length of beading wire that is about four or five inches longer than whatever you want to make. Put a clasp on one end of this piece of wire and make a small loop, with one end shorter than the other. Thread a crimp bead onto the wire, so that it goes over both the long and short end. Use the beading plyers to clamp down on the crimp bead, so that it won't move. Use nail clippers or old scissors to cut the short end off (if you decide you want to do a lot of this sort of thing, it is best to invest in a pair of wire cutters) as close to the crimp bead as possible.

By this time, your clay should be finished baking and have cooled off. String the beads onto the wire in any order you wish. If you purchased beads at the store, you can add those to your creation as well.

Check every so often to see if you've gotten the correct length. You may think that it is getting too long, but you should check to make sure. Once it's the correct length, you will want to do do the same thing you did at the other end.

This time, you add a crimp bead, then the other side of the clasp, then thread the end of the wire back through the crimp bead. Pull the end tight, but not too tight. You don't want to damage any beads. Clamp down on the crimp bead with the plyers and then cut the short end off.

Congratulations! Your bracelet or necklace is now finished and you've just made your first piece of jewelry.

Once you get experienced enough, you may want to seal the beads with a special polymer clay varnish to keep them from getting dirty. And you may want to try your hand at making earrings, but these can be more difficult to get looking right than a simple necklace or bracelet.