Faux Turquoise Jewelry Bracelet - Polymer Clay Bead Making Projects

How to make turquoise beads look like real gemstones… Use Fimo clay:

Some polyclay techniques are just so darn fun..  like making turquoise faux jewelry beads for example. In this project, you'll need some Fimo or Premo clay; black plus brown acrylic paint; and sand. As you can see in the photo, I've made a bracelet, but the following techniques also work great for making necklaces, earrings and brooches too.

One thing about real turquoise is that there are so many variations of color ranging from a soft robin's egg blue to a rich green-blue. There is also a wide variation for the coarseness of the veining inside the rock. These natural effects can easily be mimicked with the use of some cool polymer clay techniques.

Spider vein turquoise has a fine 'web' of blackish veins, whereas other varieties have heavy gold and/or copper colored striations. And some have little to no veining at all.

When creating faux Turquoise, you can mix your Fimo to get exactly the shade you desire. I like to add more than one shade to give the 'stone' more depth and character.

To make faux turquoise, blue-green clay is chopped into random sized chunks. This can be done either with a food processor (for clay use only) or it can be done by hand.

The chunks of clay are then 'tossed' with some sand mixed with acrylic paint until coated. This paint and sand mixture will become the veins in the Turquoise, so match the paint to the vein color you want.

I usually use a squirt of black and a squirt of raw sienna mixed with the sand, to get the color I like. Gold or copper could work as well.

After the clumps are thoroughly coved in the 'gritty' paint, gather your clay together into a ball. By the way, unless you want to be scraping sand and paint from under your nails for the next few weeks, I would suggest using gloves for this stage.

The size of 'clay ball' you gather up will depend on what you want to create. If you would like to make a turquoise cane that you can slice and add to pendants and polymer clay mosaics, you can shape this ball into a log of any size.

If you want to make individual beads, you can gather up small balls and shape them into round beads, cube beads or whatever shape you like.

Now at this point you are probably thinking, "What the heck? This looks terrible. I can't see any Turquoise color at all… just this icky, sandy black paint!" But don't worry, it will all work out!

Cutting slices from a log made out of this blackened clay will reveal patches of the cool turquoise color separated by fine black veins… just like real turquoise!

For the individual beads you shaped from the black, paint covered clay… they will need to be baked and sanded before you get to see the finished turquoise color again. A course grit abrasive like drywall sandpaper is perfect for getting the outside paint layer off the beads after they have been baked.

If you have no idea about how to use drywall sandpaper with polymer clay, read this article to find out more: How To Sand Polymer Clay Beads

Whether you are making a faux turquoise jewelry bracelet or beautiful stone inlays for a polymer clay mosaic, this cool polymer clay bead making project is sure to please.