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Hi all! Like many of you, I am confined to our houses here. 🙁 So I’m making the best of it, and learning new polymer clay techniques – how to make mini flowers from polymer clay.
I was inspired by spring and bright colors and wanted to start with an easy tutorial.
Supplies
- Sculpey Polymer clay
- Yellow roses: Lemonade, and Yellow
- Light Pink Roses: Ballerina Pink
- Stems: Granny Smith and Leaf Green
- Single edge razor blade
- Hobby knife
- Soft pastels
- Small paintbrush
- (Optional) Clay pasta machine for rolling thin sheets
- (Optional) Clay extruder gun for creating the stems
- (Optional) Clay sculpting tools
Steps
1) Roll out an EXTREMELY thin sheet of clay for the rose petals. Get it as thin as possible. If you are using a clay pasta machine, use the lowest setting. Because you are rolling it so thin, you don’t need too much clay, so cut off a small chunk from your block.
2) If you want your roses to have a blush of color on them, find a chalk pastel in a darker color. For example, I picked a bright pink for my light pink roses.
Using a hobby knife, shave a little bit of chalk off the corner of the pastel. Make the chalk ‘dust’ as fine as you can. I used a paint palette to corral the chalk dust, as this tends to get EVERYWHERE!
Using a very fine soft paintbrush, apply an ombre line of color to the edge of your clay sheet, with the darkest pigment at the top.
3) Cut out your rose petals. I found that for each of my 1:12 scale roses, I needed approximately 7 petals of increasing size. Rose petals are shaped like a teardrop with a wider, flat top.
If you used the chalk pastel for more color, make sure you are cutting out your petals so that the top of the petal has the most pigment.
I cut my petals out using a sharp metal clay sculpting tool, but a hobby knife works as well. Cutting them in a swift sure motion helps prevent the edges from tearing too much.
If your petals are messy, it’s okay. You will smooth out the edges when you place them on the flower.
4) Find something to mold the roses around. I used a small dotting tool, but a thick needle or skewer would work as well.
Pick up the first, smallest petal (a hobby knife or metal tool is good to help with this) and apply it around the very top of the mold. Wrap it around in a cupping motion. Then gently roll the very top of the petal.
Apply the next petal opposite the first on the mold, wrapping it around as well and rolling the top. Now you have the inside of your rose.
With your paintbrush, apply a little loose pastel to the tops and edges of the petals.
5) Pick up a slightly bigger petal and wrap it around the outside of the rose, covering one of the gaps between the petals. Roll and tint the edge of the petal.
Repeat with as many petals as you see fit. If your rose is a big, full bloom, you can use 8 or more petals. Make sure to keep staggering the position of the petals and rolling and tinting the outside edges of the petals. Use a photo of a rose for reference if it helps you.
6) When you are complete, gently pull the rose off the mold. If the clay bleeds on the bottom, tap it in a bit.
7) To create rosebuds, cut 4 small petals. Wrap them around the mold in the same way you did for the rose blooms, but don’t roll the outside edge.
8) Bake the rose blooms.
If you are using Sculpey III, you will bake them at 275 degrees for approximately 15 minutes (if you did blooms of only about 1/4 inch). If your blooms were bigger, bake them for longer (15 minutes per 1/4 inch of clay).
9) If you would like stems on your roses, I found it easiest to apply these after the blooms had already baked.
I created a blend of green clay (Leaf Green plus Granny Smith) and put a small chunk in my clay extruder gun.
I then pressed out 1 inch long strings of green clay for stems. I attached one to each baked bloom. (If you are finding that the stems aren’t sticking to the baked bloom, you can use a little fresh green clay as ‘glue’)
I also rolled out a thin sheet of green clay and cut out small green leaves. I placed 1 leaf near the top of each stem.
I then baked the roses again for another 15 minutes to harden the stems.
What do you think?
Did you like this tutorial? Do you want to see us try different kinds of flowers? Let us know in the comments!
Til’ next time,
Amanda
