Jewelry, check!

Finally I have something ready and completed! I was bit skeptical about making anything complex from Fimo, but everything went better than expected. I had few problems on the way. Mostly they were sculpting issues with strange shapes and how to achieve them; from solid chunks or by cutting them with patterns from a sheet of clay.

Next to latex molds I used Fimo itself to make molds for the little trinkets for the amulet and earrings. I baked the molds and let them cool. I used talc as release agent. I took a small piece of Fimo and push it in the mold. With right amount of talc the clay popped out almost by itself. After baking I trimmed the pieces with a exacto knife.

I painted the jewelry pieces with metal paint and used black stain to age them. The wooden pearls I painted with acrylics. Finally I sprayed clear lacquer to finish the surfaces.

 Left: coins with stain

I used jewelry hooks to attach the trinkets. I secured them with epoxy glue which I also used to glue on the red stones. I drilled tiny holes for the coins and used stitching thread to hang them from the amulet.

Fimo jewelry with push molds for Amira

With my current project I was faced with a part of costume making, which I didn’t have much experience with and that was jewelry making from polymer clay. I can’t believe what some crafty people can do with that stuff! I’ve only used Fimo one time on the tusk necklace I made for our troll costumes last year and that was basically rolling sausages and baking them.

With my second take with Fimo, I decided that instead of sculpting the pieces one by one I would use molds. I thought that it would be the best way to keep the jewelry identical. The items I made in the first bunch are Amir’s earrings and the coins found on the necklace, hairband and scarf fastener of some sort. The second lot will contain small cone shaped beads, trinkets and a tube like amulet on the long necklace.

I started by sculpting a positive mold for the earrings from air-dry clay. After sculpting I let the mold cure over night. The next day I brushed latex on the mold, let it set and repeated the steps over and over until I was satisfied with the wall thickness of the mold. I should have used gloss or varnish to seal the clay mold, since clay absorbs any moisture and turns soft. When I pulled the clay mold from the latex, I ended up breaking it. Gladly, the mold was as good as it could and I didn’t have to make another one.

For the coin molds I just brushed the latex straight on real coins. I made two sides, naturally.

I used Fimo Soft as the material for the jewelry. After cleaning and drying the molds I softened the clay on my hand, took a suitable piece to fit in the mold and just pressed it in. I placed the mold on the fridge for a while before pulling the piece out. It’s lot easier to get the clay out from the mold in one piece when it has cooled down and stiffened.

I baked the Fimo in 110 Celsius for 30 minutes. After the pieces cooled down I removed any irregularities with exacto knife.

I still need to glue on the loops, drill some holes, wet-sand the edges to get a nice, clean look, paint the pieces and finally glue on the jewels.