Bejeweled beauty

Many months after my last bejeweled beauty was taken home by somebody, I have created another one, she is not blond as not to be confused with Britney Spears or anything. She is a very beautiful figure with her arms up as she pulls her hair up, pieces escape in the back though. With this particular creation, I did not place all of the stones on her separated evenly as I did before, I actually clustered them together which is nice, you can even have patterns going if you are very creative, but I settled for linking the stones with each other in little groups. Her wings are made out of polymer clay and are an earthy brown. Her base will also be painted brown for what I consider to be a very nice earth-tone piece. The only drawback is her foot, it got twisted in baking and had to be amputated, I am using liquid polymer clay to re-attach it in hopes it will come out straight. The drawback of polymer clay wings is that they are so thin that they warp in baking so if I re-bake her to make her foot straight, her wings may bend or droop. Anyway, click on the pic to see her big.

How to make polymer clay flowers (Sunflowers)

Its that time again! Time for me to show you how you can make your very own beautiful polymer clay flower creations with a minimal of materials, space, and money! Polymer clay is relatively inexpensive and the portions you need to make flowers are minute.
First you need to get yourself some clay, it doesn't have to be colored clay, but that always makes them cute, you can also paint them if you want later, but I'm using colored clay, brown and yellow respectively.

You need to begin with the following... the scissors are actually not needed.
Yellow polymer clay, brown polymer clay, a sharp needle tool.
You can also get a pasta machine if you want very evenly flattened and thin pieces of clay use one, but don't buy it from a art supply store, go to a store like Marshall's which I know sells them for a very low price.

Begin by flattening the yellow clay into a thin sheet, and rolling the brown clay into a small ball which will be the center of the clay. It needs to be small, there is my thumbnail for reference.

We need to have 16 petals, eight for the "front" and eight for the "back"
Begin by making eight petals, cut in either this shape, or broad triangles which makes a different kind of sunflower.

If you work on a glass surface, after incising the cuts of the petals you can just lift up the sheet of clay and leave the petals behind.




Take each petal and smooth out the rough edges and also use this time to re-shape any petals that are irregular, try and make them taper a bit.

Here we have all sixteen petals we need.

Take your center and using the sharp tool do some crosshatching to give it some texture... if you wish this area can be stained with dark ink or paint and wiped away to show more texture.




Take each petal and lightly press in two or three lines running the length of the petal so that it looks more organic and less "plastic"

Here you have all you need to make a polymer clay flower, simply put them together.

Start by putting petals evenly distributed around the flower and then add remaining petals in between these, remember only eight go on at this point, try and take up all the space.






Now that you have eight petals on, you need to take the remaining eight and put them in between the last eight, this creates a much fuller flower.


After you have attached all the petals you may have "bald spots" which you can just make a couple of extra petals and add them in where you want them.
The final touch to the flower is to push all the petals back so that they are in a state of full bloom.

Enjoy!