How to Make (Badass) Sculpey Pendants

Remember in my last post how I said you should get a lot of necklace chain in case you end up making more jewelry? Well here's another tutorial on how to make some simple pendants using polymer clay (sculpey) and pictures.

Dragon in an Egg (hence why he's upside down). My favorite one.

The original tutorial was found here.

Thor was my practice piece and didn't turn out great.

Due to some issues I had, here are some tips I have for you along with the original tutorial:

- First of all, Sculpey is actually somewhat toxic when you cook it. After doing this project I had a bit of a headache, and just didn't feel well. I would recommend doing this project with as many windows open as you can, with fans in as many of them as you can. I would also recommend going into another room while the sculpey is cooking, and closing the door, then doing that for awhile afterward. I did not take any of this advice and I had a headache for quite awhile, and felt kind of nauseous.

- Second of all, if you sculpey looks like this after you've cooked it:

...then you've done it all wrong. It should still be white when you take it out, or the corners should be brown in the worst case scenario. After some extensive Google Fu, I found out that apparently burning Sculpey smells funny, but since I don't have a sense of smell I can't vouch for that, but I think you should be aware of it as a warning.

- All ovens are different, and be aware of how yours works. I would recommend doing a test square to see how long you should bake it.

-I would also do one piece at a time, in case you really ruin things. That way all your time, effort and energy haven't been put to waste (see above picture...)

- In the tutorial, she uses a pasta machine, but a rolling pin works just as well. Have some patience. Don't roll it back and forth in a crazy frenzy. Push it forward once, lift and repeat. This is good for 2 reasons: it won't stick to your rolling pin, and there will be absolutely no air bubbles when you do it this way.

Absurd and badass.

The tutorial says to use pictures printed off, but I don't have a printer, so I used pictures from already cut up books and a promotional comic book that I got for free from my place of work. As you can see, you can do any shape. The dragon there did take a long time, and my only tip for you if you do something like that is this:

When you're cutting out your shape, keep in mind that cutting the shape from the sculpey is going to be be even more tedious than cutting the shape from the magazine/book/comic/paper, so simplify and cut corners when and if you can, because you need to be realistic. I omitted some spikes from the dragon because I had a hard enough time cutting them out, so I knew cutting them with the sculpey would be even more awful. I think it worked out :)

Good luck, and enjoy!