Saturday Share - Polymer Clay Headpins

Recently, I was presented with the challenge of coming up with a headpin component that could be used as a functional embellishment to another flat component.  With our fearless leader, Jennifer Cameron's gorgeous glass headpins as inspiration, I decided to try my hand at polymer clay ones.

My finished pin bouquet!

I started by making balled headpins of 18g copper.  Then I formed small round balls of clay. Initially, I wanted to keep them round and embed the copper pin within the ball, but they kept getting way distorted and plus, I wanted to texturize the clay.  I opted to flatten the balls by pressing them into my rubber stamp, then pushing the headpin through the middle.

Raw clay with headpins, and little balls waiting to be smushed.

I questioned whether just baking them as is would be strong enough for functional use, so I added liquid clay between the pin and clay.

Translucent liquid clay around the base of the headpin.

I pushed the clay base up to the pin, then cleaned off the excess liquid clay.

I also added it to the back of the piece, trying to work it down in the crevice!

I let them dry overnight and then debated how I was going to color them.  I decided I wanted them to have an "old world" feel to them and the texture plate I had used reminded me of a damask-type pattern, so I opted to use Pearl-Ex powder before baking, which left them with an irridescent glow.

After baking, I sealed them with Varathane in a matte finish.  Success!

In a light bulb moment, I thought this design would be cool with translucent clay, and had recently acquired a few packages of  Pardo Translucent clay.  After I first started playing with polymer clay, I purchased a great tutorial by Ginger Davis Allman, of The Blue Bottle Tree, featuring faux glass effects and wanted to give it a try.

After tinting the base clay with various alchohol inks, I made my bases as before.

After adding liquid polymer and  Pearl-Ex, plus some additional texture.

These turned out just ok...not very translucent though.

These, however, turned to molten blobs!

Well, as you can see, I need to go back and figure out my baking time/temperature for these!  My hubby really liked these burned ones, though!  I definitely will be adding some of the original ones to my shop and will be playing with the translucent ones some more...stay tuned!

Thanks for stopping by!