A few quick tips on using shape templates with polymer clay…
After making your decorative clay sheet, lift it off your work surface and place it onto a piece of plain paper. This will make it easy to lift the cut shapes out later without distorting them. It also makes it easy to rotate the clay to try different viewing orientations when positioning the shape template, so you can better envisage the final product.
Add visual interest to your polymer clay jewellery by shaping it in three dimensions rather than leaving it completely flat. There are dozens of everyday objects you can cure polymer clay on to give it interesting dimension. Here are some of my favourites, with some other tips at the end.
I love earrings. They’re my favourite kind of jewellery to wear, they’re easy to make — even if you’re making something else you can almost always get a pair of earrings out of the leftovers — and being small and relatively inexpensive they’re easy to buy too.
When using glue-on findings to make stud-type polymer clay earrings, I’d suggest you don’t just glue the studs on. Add a thin backing of polymer clay too, which looks tidier and more professional and holds the studs more strongly as well.
Most of the polymer clay articles I’ll be posting here will not be brand-specific, so for simplicity I thought I’d put my curing recommendations for common polymer clay brands into a single post which I’ll reference as required.
Unless otherwise indicated, the recommendations are my own based on extensive testing. They do not always agree with the manufacturer’s instructions on the packaging!
Sue Fisher 