Sometimes you can feel the wires inside and outside.

Material: polymer clay

You can keep your polymer clays in good shape for a long time by storing them in plastic airtight boxes. You have probably discovered this by far since the scrap pieces of clay tend to build up really fast. It was about time for me to make use of some of them. In this project, I covered a paper maché box.

First mix all the little pieces of different colors by stretching and twisting them together.

After dividing the mix to equal pieces, apply the same procedure until you are happy with the color distribution.

Just a warning; too much mixing generally results in dull colors. 

Slice the cane and roll the slices. To achieve a mosaic look, cut irregular sized triangles out of the rolled clay sheets and cover the sides of the box with those, applying slight pressure with a hand roller. I used a single color clay sheet for the top of the lid. After baking for about 10 minutes, wait for the box to cool down and paint the sides with white acrylic. Try to fill in the gaps between the triangles with the paint and clean the rest immediately. After this step, bake the box for another 10 minutes.

This year’s first polymer clay study is a glass candle holder stained with liquid clay. Liquid clay has a large application area. Most frequent are transfers to paper, polymer clay or fabric. But I enjoy glass staining the most.

First of all, if you wish to color the liquid clay as I did, you need to use oil paints. Paint to liquid clay ratio depends on how translucent you want the final staining to be. Use relatively more liquid clay if you want more translucency.

I used the clay gun to extrude thin black strings of polymer clay which is used for outlining the patterns on the glass. There will be some distortion in the string shape as you apply pressure to stick it to the glass but don’t worry, it won’t look bad after all. So, even if you don’t have a clay gun, hand made strings are going to be just as good.

Using the liquid clay and the paint mix, I stained the spots inside the outlines using a thin brush. After that, I baked the candle holder for 30 minutes in 265 F (~130 C). After baking, it will look a bit dull. Just apply some standard polymer clay varnish to fix it.