I absolutely loved making these babies! The contrasting colors, the designing process, and seeing it all come together was something special. I make a lot of these snakes in different colors, with different designs and different stones and they certainly are all beautiful but for some reason these babies here made me really happy!
When making polymer clay earrings the first step is to knead the clay, or “condition” it. I recommend those who make or plan on making polymer clay earrings get themselves a pasta making machine and use it for the polymer clay, then make sure, if you do, that you don’t use it for pasta! Though most polymer clay brands are now certified non toxic, you absolutely don’t want to eat it!
After the clay is nice and conditioned, it’s ready to roll it flat! I used parchment paper above a ceramic tile because its best to bake the clay pieces on ceramic for an even distribution of heat and the parchment paper allows me to more easily move my pieces before they’re baked without squishing them. I then dipped my snake cutter into cornstarch for a non-stick effect on the clay, I made sure to gently push the cutter about halfway through the clay then lift it up and push it back all the way down, as this also prevents the clay from sticking to the cutter and ruining my pieces.
I then baked these and the other pieces I had according to the instructions on the clay wrapping. Every brand will give different times and temps, but I use Sculpey Premo, and that one calls for 275°F, for about 1 hour, is what I do. Times may also vary depending on your oven, and because these are white and I didn’t want them to scorch (yes that’s a possibility, they turn beige or even brown), I used a foil sheet to make a small tent to guard my pieces as they baked.
I let them cool for an hour or so and that’s when the fun really started!
I had my flowers picked out ahead of time, fuschia/magenta/hot pink (whatever you want to call that color) plum flowers for the little heads of my snakes and the same color itty bitty tiny Queen Anne’s Lace flowers for the body. So when I had resined up my snakes, it was super easy to just tap the flowers on them with my silicone resin tool.
I put the twin snakes under the uv light to cure, one at a time, for about 2-5 minutes to forever preserve those beautiful little flowers on those bright white snakes.
After they were cured, I sanded the edges of the snakes to clean them up and give them a refined look, then drilled holes where the attachments and pearls would go.
Best part is having to re-drill the holes in the pearls (every time I use pearls in any of my jewelry) because the seller of these all natural fresh water beauties drilled the holes a bit too small… So after drilling my pearls, for what feels like a million years per pearl, I was then able to put them on my gold wires and prep them to become a part of my earrings.
After the prepping of the pearls and my golden sun charms (these are a bit easier, just a tiny hoop needs to be snapped off the bottom of each sun with my special jewelry wire cutter), I could move on to assembling the final look of these babies with my jewelry pliers and tiny little connector hoops, or jump rings, as they’re more commonly called, and earring hooks.
Final thing to do, lay them on a leaf, surrounded by flowers and bask in their reflected beauty. Oh and take pictures and post them to etsy, instagram, facebook, pinterest, tiktok, etc, etc..!
Winter Moon Co 