Beginner's Guide To Polymer Clay Earrings

I get tons of messages and emails requesting for online workshops and I finally decided to put together a quick little beginner's guide to make your own earrings. This is pretty much the technique that I teach in my face-to-face workshops and I find it the best way to get started with polymer clay earrings.

Checkout the YouTube video below to get started!

Supplies needed:

Polymer Clay (Premo for your bases, Sculpey iii for your designs)

Pasta Machine or Acrylic Rolling Pin

Blade

Dotting Tool

Cutting Mat or Ceramic Tile

Shape Cutters

Oven Thermometer

Jump Rings, Hooks, Posts and Backings

Pliers

STEP 1

Choose a colour that you'd like for your base and run it through the pasta machine until you get a nice even surface on both sides.

STEP 2

Add designs to your slab! I'm going to do a more abstract design as it's one of the easiest ways to fill up your slab. 

I'm just adding some random blobs and patches onto my slab and then filling the rest up with some lines, dots, and squiggles.

You can use your blade to cut up even pieces.

The dotting tool is great to pick the little pieces up and also to add details onto your design.

STEP 3

Once you're done with your design, you're ready to cut the pieces up! You can use any shape cutters you like.

You need to poke holes onto your pieces for the jump rings to go through and I use the dotting tool to use this. I prefer to poke the holes before baking as it is less of a mess.

STEP 4

Once your pieces are ready, you can bake them on the ceramic tile or on a baking tray with baking paper on it. Make sure your oven is on a bake setting and that the temperature is at 130C. This is where an oven thermometer comes in handy because trust me when I say that all ovens are different!

I bake my pieces for at least 45mins but I would recommend baking them for 30mins and checking on them every 5-10mins to make sure they don't burn.

STEP 5

After your pieces are baked and cooled, you can sand down any rough edges with the finest sandpaper you can find. I use a Dremel with a wool buffer which also helps shine the edges up too.

STEP 6

Time to combine all your pieces! If you have pieces that you need to combine together, you can use the jump ring to link them. You also use the jump ring to attach the pieces to the earring hooks.

To attach studs, I have a separate tutorial on how I do that. You can watch that here: https://youtu.be/FMyygefNclQ

And, you're all done! Hopefully you'll get a few pairs of earrings out of that slab and if you have any questions please feel free to send me a message.

Isabelle