Polymer Clay Ombre Necklace

On Etsy here.

I like tag sales.  You can get awesome stuff for awesomer prices.  In my case, you can get a giant bag of polymer clay for just 2 dollars.  I'm always on the lookout for clay DIYs, because that huge bag isn't going to sculpt itself.  So when I saw Delighted Momma's tutorial, I just had to try it.

I wanted to do something a little smaller, so I started with just two blocks of clay, one white, and one in my base color.  I chose yellow, because it's such a happy color. Now, this project didn't work out perfectly.  I ended up having to redo the necklace, but I'll get to that later.  Anyway, I chose my colors.

Then, I broke up the yellow block into small chunks to make it easy to work with.  Polymer clay is hard to mold, but when it's in smaller chunks it's much easier to soften.

Then, I just played with each of the little chunks, until it was soft enough to mold easily.

Then, I started making the beads.  I did one big one of the yellow, two slightly smaller ones with white added, two more even smaller and whiter, and so one until I had 11 beads.

Then, I used a skewer to poke a hole in each of the balls.

Here's where it went a little awry.  I use my toaster oven to bake polymer clay, but this time, I did it for too long, and the clay got burnt (It smells like burning plastic when it burns btw, which is unpleasant.)  So I had to throw them away, and I burnt my finger in the process. Anyway, I redid the above steps in purple, then put the beads on a chain, and added a fake pearl at each end.

So here is my new finished project.

I like it.  It's worth the burn.

-Amelia