Fall is my favorite time of the year to decorate & create for. I discovered this fun nature-inspired pendant on the Happy Hour Projects Blog. What a perfect quick & easy project for this beautiful time of year.
What you will need:
- Small leaves
- Polymer clay and roller, possibly a clay cutter depending on your design idea
- Jump ring and chain
- Optional acrylic paint and sealer (like Sculpey Gloss Glaze)
You will only need a bit of clay for this project, so leftovers from a earlier project work great. If your clay is new, you will need to condition it by rolling it for a few minutes until is softens. When working with clay its nice to work on wax paper or parchment paper to protect your work surface.
Roll the clay out to about 1/4 inch. Press your small leaf into the clay, vein side/backside toward the clay, then flip your clay over and roll it out a little. This will prevent your leaf from moving. Now, peel your leaf off and you should have a nice impression. If you have little pieces that got stuck, you can use a tooth pick to gently remove them from the clay.
Now, trim your clay to the size pendant you want. Adrianne opted for a 1 – 1/2 inch circle. This is actually a cookie cutter that she snagged for her clay supplies. Kitchen and cookie utensils work awesome for polymer clay with one disclaimer: once you have used them for clay, do NOT use them for food again, they are no longer food safe. You can even hit up thrift stores or yard sales for an old rolling-pin or cookie cutters to play with clay. It’s much less expensive than the new supplies you will find in the clay aisle of your craft store and work every bit as well, but don’t use your regular kitchen gear to play with clay.
Poke a hole in your pendant with a toothpick (or a drink stirrer also works well) and lay it on a baking sheet. I would recommend the same thing here – re-purpose an old baking sheet just for your clay projects to be safe!
Now, bake it according to the package instructions. This will vary slightly by brand, but what you can expect is that it will take about 30 minutes for each 1/4 inch thickness .
Once it’s baked and cooled, you can add some paint if you like to help add contrast! You can use a brush or just use a bit of paper towel to coat your pendant with paint (making sure all the cracks were totally painted).
Then with a damp paper towel, wipe off the excess paint from the surface, leaving the paint just in the leaf veins. If you wipe off too much, just try again. 🙂 You can add some Sculpey Gloss if you want to seal it with a shiny finish, but that’s totally optional.
Then, when it’s dry, just add a jump ring and chain! Now you can wear a little bit of nature! This is really a great project to do with the kids while they are off for the Holidays.
Thanks for stopping by for a visit & I hope you have a very creative day!
I love this project.