Hi there!
Sandy here.
Welcome to another polymer clay jewelry video at my YouTube channel and my blog, KeepsakeCrafts.net.
Today I'm going to show you how to use polymer clay to make your own little bird's eggs and
then use wire to make a nest.
It can be made into any piece of jewelry you like.
So the first step for making our cute little birds nest is to get some polymer clay.
Now you can make your eggs in any color you like.
This one is Sculpey Soufflé in Robin's Egg and it happens to be just perfect robin's
egg blue.
Now you can make your eggs out of just a solid color, but it's kind of nice to add some inclusions
and you'll see them in this one that they've got a bit of a speckle to them and it's really
simple to do that.
So here is a quarter block of polymer clay and I'm going to actually just take a quarter
of that and then I'm going to roll it out flat.
Now there are a few different things you can use for inclusions in your polymer clay.
One is embossing powder.
This is used in card making and scrapbooking and you don't need very much.
I have here this little scoop.
It's about 1/64 of a teaspoon.
Here's 1/8 of a teaspoon and about four of these little ones, this I think came in a
thing of Stevia, just a little tiny amount, a pinch and you just sprinkle your powder
on and then you can just fold it up and mix it in and what you end up with is something
that looks like this and if there's any little bits that escape as you're mixing you can
just roll them in and you get kind of a fine speckled texture.
Now if you don't have embossing powder you may have poppy seed in your kitchen and you
can use about twice as much poppy seed because they're bigger and you need more to get the
effect and you can see here's one that I mixed in two of the scoops of poppy seed and you
get the bigger chunks.
So here's a side by side, here's the embossing powder and here's the poppy seed, but what
I decided what I'd like to do is actually have a little bit of each, the bigger chunks,
the finer bits and some clear areas so I have a little snake of each, embossing powder,
poppy seed and just plain and then I just rolled each one into a snake and then you
can just roll it out, twist it together a few times, fold it.
Do that just a couple times.
Foll it out, twist it, roll it on itself and then you can cut yourself some pieces to make
your eggs.
Now in this example, I've made about 8mm eggs and in this one I've made 4mm eggs.
If you want a specific size for your eggs, you can use a little tool like this, a caliper.
So let's say I'm going to go right in the middle and make 6mm eggs.
I'll set that at 6mm and then I'm going to roll out my log so it's about that dimension
and then I'm going to cut it into pieces that are about 6mm and that will give you 6mm balls.
Now to roll these smoothly into a ball, you just put one in your palm, put your other
palm over and just roll in circles and you'll get a nice smooth ball.
If it's a ball and not an egg shape, you can just roll it with your fingers just very,
very lightly on one end to get yourself an egg shape.
Now it's a good idea to let these cool a little bit before you make the holes.
You can put them in the freezer for 20 minutes or let them sit overnight to firm up because
they will distort a bit.
Just take a needle tool and notice I'm making the hole towards the bottom of the egg so
that way when I wire them into my nest they can kind of stand up.
I can arrange them at different angles.
So you just use your needle tool, press the tool in.
You can fix your shape if you distorted it and then those are ready to go onto an index
card and be baked and you'll have your little egg beads.
Here are a few that I made earlier.
Now you can see that the shapes aren't perfect, but remember that you're only going to really
be seeing a portion of it above the hole.
Then to make your nest you're going to need some wire, 20 or 22 gauge wire is good.
This one was done with 22 gauge square silver wire and this one was done with 20 gauge brass
colored copper wire and for this one, I'm going to use 20 gauge copper wire and you
can just leave it on the spool.
That way you don't have any waste.
You'll need about a yard and a half to two yards, depending on the size you're making.
So you're just going to slide your beads onto your wire and if your holes got a little bit
smashed, you can always go back in with a drill.
Now you want to leave a bit of a tail, somewhere between 5-6" is fine and then you're just
going to bring this around into a loop.
Just make a bit of a circle and then you're just going to keep doing that.
Keep going around and around in a circle.
This is a very inexact thing because we're just making a little birds nest so it's nothing
that requires any precision.
You can just use your fingers and keep making circles.
I'll just pull a little off my spool.
And you probably want to go around 6-8 times and at first it looks like an utter mess,
but just keep going around.
You can kind of reshape it with your fingers.
Keep going until it starts to look like a bit of a nest and when you find you have a
shape that you're starting to like, go ahead and take that tail and just tuck it down through
the wires.
Grab a pair of pliers and give that a pull and that will just kind of set that shape
for you and then you just keep going around and around with the wire.
Like I said, very inexact and then every so often you can take that tail, wrap it through.
You don't have to wrap it through all of the outside wires, just a few and that kind of
helps cinch it in place and keep going until you like the look of what you have.
Now there I cracked my bead.
I pulled it right off so I'm just going to set that aside and wire it back into the next
when I'm done.
So I'm going to stop there.
I think that will be good with that one.
It's a little bit of a wonky nest.
I kind of like it.
I'm going to cut off about a 4-5" piece.
I'm actually going to go up with this.
Slide my little egg back on and go back down and be a little more careful this time.
Be careful not to pull too hard and now on the back, kind of just keep circling around
with this and then take your tool and tuck that wire end in and I think I'll do one more
wrap around here.
Just make sure your wire ends are tucked in and there you have it.
Now this would be really cute to add a couple jump rings and add it to some beads for a
bracelet.
You can make a couple of bitty ones, make them even a bit smaller than this for earrings.
Make a nice big one for a pendant.
It's a really fun project for the springtime.
Thanks so much for watching KeepsakeCrafts' videos.
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Happy creating.
Bye bye.