Starry Night Polymer Clay Jewellery Tutorial

Making Starry Night Polymer Clay Jewellery Step by Step

Making the Starry Night Veneer:

• To start you’ll need a roughly equal amount of Premo Zinc Yellow and Premo White and twice the amount of Premo Cobalt Blue rolled into logs.
• Chop each log into rough pieces.
• Squish the pieces together and roll into a log.
• Roughly chop again, squish together again and compact into a log.
• Roll a sheet of black polymer clay through the middle setting of the pasta machine.
• Lay the log on the black sheet and trim up the sides of the sheet so that it is the same width as the log.
• Wrap the log with the black sheet.
• Roll your log to eliminate air bubbles and reduce to around a 1cm diameter.
• Cut your log into pieces around 3cm in length.
• Taper one end of each piece and roll them into snails.
• Place all of your snail pieces together to form a sheet, alternating with longer snakes and smaller snails. See the video for the process.
• Roll your whole sheet flat using your acrylic roller.
• Shave off the black layer from the top of your sheet using your flexible tissue blade to reveal the starry night pattern.
• Run the sheet through your pasta machine on the thickest setting.
• Run the sheet through again on the second thickest setting to flatten it out.

Making the Pendants:

• Use a cutter of your choice to cut out your pendants. I'm using a cutter from my Cleopatra Collar set.
• I cut out around 20 pieces.
• Run over the pieces lightly with your fingertips to remove fingerprints and bake for 15 minutes at the recommended temperature just to set them.
• Roll out a sheet of black Premo on the thickest setting and lay it on your work surface.
• Lay your cooled, baked pieces on the black clay and cut around them again using your cutter.
• Tidy up the edges and trim if necessary.
• Texture the backs. I will be using a piece of foam.
• Bake them again for a full hour at the recommended temperature.
• Finish off the sides using the Jessama Smear Technique.
• Bake again for half an hour at the recommended temperature.
• When cooled, sand the front, back and sides using your wet/dry sandpaper or polishing papers. Start from the lowest grit, in my case 400, to the highest, in my case 8000.
• Drill the pendants through their sides using a hand drill.
• Give each a pendant a light coat of Renaissance wax on the backs and sides, then give them a good buff with an old rag or a dremel tool.
• Apply a layer of resin to each pendant. I like to use Ice Resin. If you aren't familiar with using resin see my full tips and tricks resin tutorial for help with that.
• Allow to cure for 24 hours.

Stringing your Starry Night Polymer Clay Jewellery:

• Divide your pendants up into two rough groups of predominantly yellow or blue to help keep the overall effect even after stringing. I'm going to string mine in a one yellow, one blue pattern.
• Cut a length of accu-flex. I like 16” long. String on a charlotte crimp and then a crimp. Leave a small tail of string and then squish the crimp. Bring the charlotte crimp back up and close it around the crimp. Open a jump ring and link that through the hole in the charlotte crimp. Put your clasp onto the jump ring and close the ring.
• Start your stringing with about 10 clear seed beads.
• Then add your pendants onto the accuflex in the order that you have decided on, with a single seed bead between each one.
• Finish off with about 10 clear seed beads.
• To finish your polymer clay necklace just repeat the steps with the charlotte crimps and clasp above.

And that's your finished Starry Night polymer clay jewellery.

In the video tutorial I show a lot of different tips and tricks to help get the most out of the process, so please do take a look at that.