Hi there, Sandy here with another polymer clay video here at my YouTube channel and
my blog. Today is the third in a series of Christmas charms and we're going to be making
this cute snowman.
So to make this little snowman charm, you will need polymer clay in white, black, red,
green and orange. You'll also need a bit of flocking powder, you'll need a clay blade,
a toothpick, an eye pin, a straight edge razor blade is helpful, a needle tool, you'll need
some liquid clay such as translucent liquid Sculpey, wire cutters, pliers, you'll need
a scrap of an index card or just a piece of printer paper and a little bowl and also some
baby wipes are helpful.
So the first thing we're going to do is prepare our eye pin and set it aside. Just use your
wire cutters to cut that off at about a quarter of an inch below the eye and then use your
chain nose pliers to bend that into a hook and just set that aside for the moment.
Next you want to take your flocking powder and you can find this at the craft store.
I bought this set with all these colors and it's just a very fine powder. Now if you don't
have flocking powder, you could coat your snowman with something like Perfect Pearl's
Mica Powder. That would work too, but this just kind of gives it a cute fuzzy look. So
just put your flocking powder in a bowl and set that aside.
Next take your liquid clay and put a small dot on your work surface. I like to work on
one of these ceramic tiles. Next we're going to take our white clay and roll out two balls
for the snowman. The nice thing about covering the clay with flocking powder is that you
don't have to keep it absolutely pristine. If there's any big chunks of anything in there
take it out, but little bits of lint won't show through the clay and then just roll it
until you have a nice, neat ball for the bottom of the snowman. You want about a 3/8", about
a 9-10mm ball and I'm just using the palm of my hand. It's kind of small to put in between,
but you can do that as well, until I have a nice, round ball and then for his head you
want just a slightly smaller ball. Maybe a little bit over 1/4". Take your toothpick
and add just a little dab of liquid clay to a spot on one of the balls and push the two
together. Now as liquid clay sits, it will get more tacky and hold better so we're just
going to set this aside for a minute.
Now you can decide if you'd like your snowman to have a red hat brim or a green hat brim,
which ever hat brim color you want. Choose that. You're going to roll that and the black
clay into logs that are the same size, the same diameter. There's a cool little trick
here. Instead of trying to wrap the hat brim around, it's so tiny it's hard to do, we're
going to do it a clever way. Cut off an end of each of the logs in a straight cut and
then push those together and then roll them a little on your work surface just to meld
them and bring them down to about 1/4" in diameter or a little bit less and now use
your blade to cut just a little bit of that green. There's your hat brim and now you can
cut off a little bit more of the black, depending on how tall you want his hat to be. Now roll
about 1/4" or a little bit smaller ball of black clay into a ball and use your scrap
of paper or index card to flatten it. Don't flatten it too thin, just like this. That's
a little too big. If you're not sure how big you want your hat brim you can always hold
it up to your snowman to see if it's too big or small. That's good and then you can place
the hat brim right on the base of the hat. The hat band, excuse me, not brim. Just kind
of tap it on there a little and soften that cut edge.
And now take the hook that we made. Hold it with your chain nose pliers, hold it by the
loop and press it into the top of the hat and you can kind of squeeze that a little
around the loop and now when it's baked, that hook is embedded and it won't come out.
So use your blade to take that up off your work surface and set that aside. Next take
your orange clay and just roll it into a bit of a tear drop in your fingers just like this.
Use your needle tool if you like to add a few lines around it and then use your blade
to cut off a piece. This is probably far longer than we need, but we can cut it off after
baking.
Now take a baby wipe out of your container and set it off to the side. You're going to
need it in a minute. Take some of your liquid clay and your snowman. Now that it's been sitting
for a few minutes the head should be sitting pretty firmly stuck to the body and use your
fingers to rub all over the snowman with the liquid clay. We want to make it tacky. The
flocking will stick to the clay while it's sticky and unbaked, but then it won't stick
so well after baking so this liquid clay will make it stick. So make sure you cover the
whole thing and then drop it into the bowl of flocking and then right away pick up your
baby wipe and wipe your fingers and then you can just shake that around in the flocking
until it's thoroughly coated.
So now you can take these three pieces, the hat, the nose and the snowman body and bake
them for about 30 minutes at the manufacturer's recommended temperature. While we're waiting
for those pieces to bake, we can go ahead and make a scarf. Take the color you want
for the scarf, I'm using red and green, traditional colors, but you can certainly make yours any
color you want, and roll out a snake that's about 1/8" in diameter. That's far more than
I need and use your scrap of paper again to flatten that out. The reason we use the paper
is it helps keep our finger prints off it. It makes it nice and smooth and also keeps
it from sticking to our fingers. Use your blade to trim that to about 1/8" wide and
then trim the ends so it's an inch or a little over an inch and a half long. Use your single
edge blade just to fringe the ends. It's these little details that make it really cute. Use
your clay blade to scoop that up off the surface and flip it upside down. Put it wrong side
up.
Now we have our pieces out of the oven all baked and the first thing we need to do is
decide if there's one side that looks better that you would prefer to be the front and
then take your blade and you're going to do a little snowman surgery and just trim a section
off his head. This is where his hat will go and I'm going to make it at an angle because
I want his hat to go at an angle, like that. You can take off more or less. I recommend
actually making several and then you can do some experimenting and see what you like best.
Next we're going to take our black and we're going to roll tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny bits
of black. These will be for his eyes. If you're not sure you got them small enough, you can
take your needle tool and pick one up and hold it to his face and see if you think it's
small enough. If it needs to be smaller, what you can do is roll it out into a snake and
then cut it in half and see if that's the right size. Just keep experimenting until
you have the size that you think works for you.
Next take your toothpick and add just a little dab of the liquid clay in each of the spots
where you want the eyes to go. I'm going to add enough here so it will soak into the flocking
and help it stick to the clay, but not so much that it's all goopy and then pick up
each eye with your needle tool and just kind of press it in. You can use the needle tool
to just kind of fluff it up. That will make it look a bit more like coal and if a bit
of the flocking gets in there after you bake it, you can touch it up with a black Sharpie.
Take your toothpick and apply a line of your liquid clay to the back side of your scarf.
Make sure you get the ends because we want those stuck down so they don't catch on things
and then lay your snowman right over the scarf, centered with it between his head and his
body and use your blade to lift up one end and just flip it over and then repeat on the
other side and just gently pat it in place.
Next take your carrot nose and just hold it up to see if you like the size and dip the
end in the liquid clay and add it to his face. How cute and then kind of hold onto his body
from the front and the back so you don't squish the scarf and add more liquid clay to the
top of his head and then you can add on his hat. Now as I said, liquid clay on baked clay
takes a moment. It will get a little tacky after a bit so it might fall off if you put
too much on and it gets too slippery so you may want to hold that on for a moment and
there he is. You can place him on a piece of card and bake him for 45 minutes at the
manufacturer's recommended temperature.
And so here are several little snowmen I've made. Aren't they cute? They're a lot of fun.
You can make them into earrings, pendants or you can make the others in the series and
make yourself a charm bracelet.
I hope that you liked this project and you'll give it a try. If you liked this video, give
it a like and share it with your friends. You can follow me on Facebook, Pinterest,
Instagram and on my blog. Happy creating!