Adventures in Polymer Clay: Pool Ball Beads

Stuck at home during Melbourne's 4th lockdown and not able to go to work, I had to find other ways to amuse myself. So, having spent some time on recording songs and drawing comics pages, I now turned to other pursuits and that old chestnut – making beads out of polymer clay!

Back in March 2020 I made a beaded bracelet using polymer clay. Here's the post about it if you care to see how that went.

Long story short, it was pretty good – even more so once the beads were sprayed with gloss spray to finish. This time, I wanted beads that represented one of my favourite pastimes: playing pool. 15 beads, each resembling a numbered pool ball.

Below you can see the raw clay beads. Obviously pool balls are perfectly spherical, and this is pretty much impossible to do with clay unless you're Leonard of Vinci with the patience of a flipping saint. No dice. So, if they're a little bit squished it's okay.

In the ten-pack of multi-coloured clay you will have to mix up your own colours for orange (5 ball and 13), dark purple (4 and 12) and maroon (7 and 15). Of these, maroon is the most difficult. I found that red and light purple gets closest to it, if colour accuracy is important to you.

(Some sets of pool balls have the number 4 [and 12] with a bright pink colour, and the 6 [and 14] with a lime green. What's up with that?)

 

 

Anyway, make 'em, bake 'em, paint the numbers on and glaze 'em. I used acrylic white paint to paint the white circles, and a permanent fineliner marker to write the numbers, before they were sprayed with gloss spray. Shiny, so shiny. 

 

A nice side effect of this is that once baked, the white clay goes slightly off-white, just like real pool balls.

 

But I done screwed up and didn't make the holes wide enough, and my elastic thread wouldn't fit through. I had to make do with wire instead, with a metal clasp and ring attached.

 

 

 

I find this tiny metal clasp thing very fiddly to use and impossible to put on one-handed, so in the end I put them on some cheap elastic instead, which is just until I find something better. This was just a trial run though, if I get any more clay I'll have another bash at it. For now, I'm fairly happy with the results.

Adventures in Polymer Clay: Marbled Beads

Well wouldn't you know it, I just couldn't leave well enough alone and was soon back in the polymer clay for a second bash at creating something of a three-dimensional nature. This time: beads! Good golly do I ever love beads. Especially handmade or wooden ones. Each one has its own character, and because they are either made individually or not mass-produced, they can be striking and interesting.

By intertwining two long thin 'worms' of clay, then kneading them a bit and rolling into balls, you can get beads with a certain marbled effect. I had enough clay to make nearly five dozen of them – 59 to be precise – and used a needle to make holes through each one. Putting 18 of them on an elastic string produced this bracelet, as you see below.

By putting a few plain-coloured ones in there too, it changes the effect and adds variety. You might want to go for a different option, if you try it yourself, which I recommend you do.

And there it is. Any colour you like, as Pink Floyd would say. Or was it Deep Purple? Or Moby Grape? Either way, wise words indeed. Now, get beading, or I'll make you dance to the tune of my hickory stick!!

Bye for now.

Adventures in Polymer Clay: Sugar

Do you remember my character Sugar from Airbury Academy, you know, the girl with the pink hair? Well you should – she's right up there in the banner heading of this blog. I used some coloured polymer clay to make a little figurine of her. She looks a bit pudgy, but it's not bad for someone who is totally inept at sculpture. i.e. me.

See the resemblance? Uncanny, ain't it?

Working with polymer clay is quite easy to do. It doesn't make a mess, you can blend the colours easily, you don't have to hurry in case it goes hard, and if you know what you're doing (which I don't) you can put together each differently-coloured part into a cohesive whole. Then you put it in the oven and bake it.

I still have some clay left so I dare say there will be more of this sort of thing appearing here in the not too distant future.