Meet Miss Pink Widow Spider… A Unique Accessory For Your Steampunk Pendants:
Sometimes working with polymer clay is just too much fun! Such is the case with the little beaded spider in the photo. She’s exploring the top of a steampunk jewelry design I’m currently working on. More pictures to follow in a future article.
The other day I was talking about using glass beads in your polymer clay work and I mentioned that glass bugle beads make good spider legs.
Well here is the creepy crawly little gal I was talking about. Her body is made with black and white marbled polymer clay. Then pink and black glass beads were used to make her legs. Isn’t she cute!
As mentioned in the original bugle beads article, I pulled three separate pieces of fine wire through the hole in a black and white polymer clay bead.
The wires were cut at about 6 inches long so that there would be enough length for each of the six legs (3 on each side), plus some extra for securing to the pendant.
Each of the back two legs on each side took three pink glass bugle beads and four black glass seed beads. The front legs are shorter with only two pink beads and three black.
As you can see, she’s waving at you with one of her front legs! Courtesy of my quirky husband the photographer.
Polymer clay beaded spiders are a bit of a tradition for some folks at Christmas time. Legend has it that a poor family awoke one Christmas morning, delighted to see their tree covered in extravagant volumes of tinsel. Turns out it was a gifted spider who blanketed the tree with her glistening web.
Beaded spiders are also fun to have around at Halloween. And as you can see in today’s photo above, they can bring charm to Goth and Steampunk jewelry designs.
Try making your own version of the pink widow spider and let me know how it works out.
Cute, I have about a million bugle beads so I’ll have to try that.
Spiders have 8 legs though… ;)
OMG you’re right Silverleaf! I do excel at making mistakes so you don’t have to! Thanks for catching that! :-)
The spider in m a cane I made only had 6 legs too. It’s a PC thing !!
Yeah Anna, I think sometimes when you go to make something like this, it seems too busy with all those legs. Maybe that’s why cartoonists often only put three fingers and a thumb on their cartoon’s hands. It just looks right that way!
Though I just went over to check the spider cane I made awhile back and I gave him eight legs, so I guess that theory’s out the window! ;-)
this is darling! My brother absolutely loves spiders, I see a project coming on! *grin* …and I always have a little spider placed on my Christmas tree, no matter how small or large the tree is, been doing it since I was a child, I have even carried around the same little homemade spider for many years now, though the poor little dear has become quite fragile. Maybe this year I will retire him with one of these little beauties *smile*
Awww that sounds very sweet SusanAnn! Make sure to give the little guy a nice retirement party ! :-)
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Staedtler’s Steampunk pocket watch
I saw this watch design on the inside cover of this month’s Polymer Cafe but couldn’t find the link to download the graphics and instructions as Staedtler offers. If anyone else is interested this is the link.
Under Fimo Creative Tips click on the 2nd row and use right and left arrows to navigate.
Happy claying!
Marion