Rose Pendant Necklace - A Summer Polymer Clay Jewelry Making Project

Sculpted Fimo clay rose bead jewellery created with warm colors of the season:

The flowers are blooming. Birds are chirping. Time to make some beautiful summer rose jewelry inspired by the bright and sunny days here in Vancouver Canada.

Well I finally have a project to show you, made with the summer colors from my sunflower polymer clay recipe post. There have been many different beads and millifiori canes that have come out of that palette.

Mod canes, spliced canes, a leaf cane or two and a few flower ones. But I have also been experimenting a little with some sculpted rose beads.

Not to be confused with rose beads made from the actual petals of a rose. These roses are the 3D kind. Small sculptures that closely resemble the shape of a real rose.

Lately there has been a lot of wonderful flower brooches and pins selling on Etsy. Large ones the size of your palm… as well as tiny ones about the size of a peanut. There have also been many beaded rose chokers and short necklaces that remind me of the jewellry of flamenco dancers.

With this summer color palette containing a fair amount of translucent clay, it is well suited for making flowers. My mother is crazy about yellow roses so I thought I would make her a rose out of the yellows in the palette.

First a stripy blend was created with the bright yellow and the darker yellow clay recipes. This striated blend is my own twist on the Skinner Blend. I'll have to show you this special variation of the Skinner Blend technique one of these days.

Wearing gloves, each petal was cut and carefully formed. In my opinion there's nothing worse than a beautifully sculpted rose with fingerprints all over it!

The translucent clay in the recipe gives the petals a realistic look like no opaque clay can. For me it really makes a huge difference. So I always use translucent Fimo or Premo in my flower beads.

One thing that most people do on rose beads, is cut off the back where the petals come together like a point, and make it flat. For this bead since it was fairly large, I wanted a more realistic hip and calyx.

So first a 'rose hip' shape was formed from the petal base. Thick slices from a leaf cane of the summer green colors, were elongated and the edges were serrated to look more like rose leaves. These rose leaves were then placed over the hip and smoothed into place.

Because a sculpted bead like this is tricky to sand, extra care is needed to make sure the surfaces are smooth before baking.

This bead could be strung several different ways, so the hole was pierced through the center and out where the stem would be. This way it can slide onto a wire for a rose necklace; Dangle as a rose pendant; Be used as a brooch or even glued onto the end of a flower stick pin.

This rose pendant jewelry turned out to be a very fun polymer clay jewelry making project. The fact that it was created with a pretty summer palette made it even better! Can't wait to give it to my mom… a yellow rose whose beauty will never fade away!