How to Make Polymer Clay Jewelry

Making your own beaded jewelry at home can be both easy and fun. Besides being enjoyable, you will end up with a completely unique creation that is entirely your own.

The absolute easiest way to start is to buy all the beads and simply string them together. In this way, you can make an expensive looking piece of jewelry for a mere fraction of the cost. However, if a more unique look is what you are after, actually making the beads yourself is a better option.

The first thing you will need to do is to go to a craft store and purchase some beading wire, the plastic coated kind is the best. Some people say you should start beading with clear elastic beading cord, but I find elastic to be frustrating to use and you can end up with a really bad result.

When you purchase the beading wire, you should get some 'crimp beads', a pair of beading plyers and some sort of clasp. All together, these things may cost you $20-30. This may seem like a lot, when you haven't even gotten your beads yet, but these supplies will make approximately 10 good sized necklaces or 20 to 30 bracelets.

Now that you've got the 'skeleton' of your jewelry, you need to get the rest. At this point, you may have given into temptation and also added several packs of assorted pre-made beads to your shopping cart. That's fine, and you can make a necklace just out of them if you wish.

But if you still want the unique look, you need to find the aisle with the polymer clay. This is not the same as modeling clay. If you purchase ordinary modeling clay, your project will not work. The polymer clay may be difficult to find and there may be anywhere from two or three color choices to a couple dozen.

Make sure to purchase at least red, blue, yellow, black and white. With these as a base, you can make almost any color you want. There are also 'pearl/metalic' and rock colors. A small block of this will cost approximately $3 to $5. One small brick will go a lot further than it looks.