Remember This??? Easy Peasy Tutorial for the Dog Toy Bead.... And Pixie's Reaction to the Bead and the Toy...

Remember this 

Dog Toy?  

I made this huge bead from this 

Inspiration.

Now, if you would like to learn how I made this bead,

and,

maybe make one for yourself,

scroll down.

Scroll down a little.

Here's the way I made mine, and 

it's 

Easy Peasy.

Supplies:

A cookie cutter that is approximately 3/4 of an inch.  It can be any shape.

Polymer clay in 5 colors.  I used scraps. Each scrap was about 1/4 of a block of clay.

Liquid polymer clay

A mandrel of some kind for the hole in the bead.

Oven for curing the clay.

Optional, but nice.

Pasta machine to condition your clay.  You can condition your clay by hand, too. so you don't need a pasta machine.

Acrylic rolling pin.

I make the assumption that you know how to condition polymer clay.  If you don't, please search the internet.

Condition your clay.

Using a piece of clay that won't be seen, 

roll it into a ball.  This is your base.

You will put all the circles on this base.

Depending on the size of your base,

you might want to cut it in half.  This piece does not use 1/4 block of the clay.

 Make it smaller than you thing. 

My finished bead is almost

1 3/4" across.  That's BIG!

Using a cookie cutter of any shape,

cut out 3 shapes of each color.

I did add more, but not until after I added the balls I made.

If you use a cookie cutter, then roll the clay into balls, the balls will all be the same size.

That's what you want.

This is what your collection of colors should look like. 

You will also notice that I poked a hole in the base bead. 

You can use anything for a mandrel.

I used a mandrel that I have used for making lampwork glass beads, but

you can use a needle, a chopstick, whatever you have on hand.

Make sure, though, that the hole is big enough to accommodate a chain or wire for stringing.

As I added the balls on the base bead,

I worked with the base bead on my mandrel

so that I would not loose track of the holes in the base bead.

Before I added the clay balls,

I put a small amount of liquid polymer clay on the end that would be secured to the base bead. 

You don't need a lot of liquid clay, but it does secure the clay to the clay.

I also flattened one end of the ball.

This is the end that I attached to the base.

I worked with my two end colors.

In my case it was yellow and green.

I put three yellow balls on one end,

and three green balls on the opposite end.

 Then I added the red and purple balls and alternated each color.

I found I had to make more clay balls to fill in the space.

Depending on the size you used,

you might not need to do that.

After I finished attaching the balls to the base,

I removed the mandrel and baked my clay according to 

manufacturer's directions.

I covered the clay with aluminum foil to prevent burning.

I did bake the clay for 45 minutes.

Be sure to remove the mandrel when you bake the clay.

The mandrel might be very difficult to remove if you leave it in during baking.

Let the bead cool.

You can choose to add a glossy finish to it or not.

That's up to you.

I was very happy with the finished project, and I hope you are, too!























Here was Pixie's Reaction to the Toy and the Bead

 Look at the empty stare.
Look how she ignores the
toy.

Now, she's just annoyed.

That's my girl!