Button Earrings

I've made some simple button earrings and pendant necklaces. They were so much fun to make. Hard to know when to stop! Thought I'd share the process for any of you who have some clay kicking around.

I gathered together some supplies that inspired me. I love these clear flexible stamps. They are meant to be used with a clear rigid stamp base, but they work very well without it on the polymer clay. I mixed up a batch of a pleasing colour and flattened it out to a 3mm thickness.

I dusted the stamps with cornstarch and stamped right onto the rolled out clay. I cut around the stamped images with a craft knife and tried to pair everything off. Some of the images I used a tiny round cutter on. These are my favorite pieces. Random patterns chosen without looking too closely. I really just tried to make sure I had two of each kind of pattern.

I dusted each piece with gold metal pigment powder before I baked them. After I baked and cooled the pieces I used a nail buffer to remove the gold powder from the high points of each design. I super glued earring backs right onto the back of each piece and poked them into apiece of cardboard to hold them still. I used some water based glossy varnish to shine them up and make sure the gold powder stayed put.

After the pieces dried I used my drill to make a small hole in the bottom of each piece so I could hang a bead or bead cluster from each earring. I also drilled into the top of each necklace piece to glue eye pins for hanging.

I had a bit of clay left over and decided some beads were in order. Now to figure out exactly what I'm going to do with these!