Make your own handmade bird jewelry using polymer clay cane designs and keep up with one of the latest funky fashion trends at Etsy.com:
Sometimes you can be off on your own creating jewellry, only to find out that what you are designing happens to be a hot trend. This happened to me with my ‘Little Green Birdie’ Pendant as shown in the above photo.
As some of you will recall, lately I’ve been making Fimo pendants and charms from vintage silver spoons. You may also have seen the Spring color recipes and resulting clay canes I talked about back in June of this year. Well my little green bird pendant seems to have brought all of these ideas together in a fun little jewelry project that I’m proud to show to you today.
As always after creating a piece of jewelry, I head on over to Etsy to get a ball park idea of what it could sell for. Much to my delight, I quickly discovered a total of 3661 ‘Bird Pendant’ listings simply by using the etsy search function in the ‘Jewelry Tags’ section of their site.
Wow! I must have hit on something with potential. A second search using ‘Bird Jewelry’ as the search term revealed a total of 7896 items!
Time to head on over to ‘The Storque’ which is the name of Etsy’s blog. There I just searched for ‘bird’ as the keyword and sure enough… eight articles on something to do with handmade birds. One article called Birdie Beauties indicated that “…the ever popular bird iconography promises to be a solid trend for 2008.”
Cool! Looks like I’m not the only one who likes the simple, earthy appeal of birds.
Bird pendant jewelry trends on Etsy are looking good and are a timely thing for you to learn to make in polymer clay. What do you think? Is this a trend that will quickly fly away? Or has is nested here to stay?
Very pretty. I remeber seeing the bird cane in an earlier blog. This sounds like a weird question…which way is the spoons bowl facing? backward or forward?
It looks like it is backward facing in this picture.
Marianne
Thanks Marianne! It has actually been hammered flat this time and sanded to give it an etched look.
Cindy Lietz’s last blog post..Bird Pendant Jewelry Trends on Etsy – Make Them with Polymer Clay
Hi Cindy,
I just went over to Etsy through your “Birdie Beauties” link. Well, I just have to tell you that I think your little green birdie is the cutest of them all! I just love your little guy (or gal). It is so whimsical, it makes me smile every time I see it (as Marianne, I too saw it on another one of your pages):)
I tried my hand at making a bird cane a couple of weeks ago. I didn’t think it turned out, and was really surprised when it did!!! I will send you a photo of it soon, if you like.
I was just thinking of how cool it would be if there were a page on your blog for people to send in photos of their work so that we could all see each others creations. I have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA of how hard that would be, or if it is even possible on a blog, but wondered if that might ever be in the future of your pages? Your site is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO G-R-E-A-T JUST AS IT IS…but I was just wondering…
ALL of my support for you as always :)…Cindy Erickson
Thank you Cindy E. I’m glad you like that little guy! I would love to see how your cane turned out, please do send me a picture!
I have definitely been giving some thought to setting up a photo upload feature here at the site. I think it’s an absolutely great idea for making this blog more community focused.
Anyone else care to 2nd, 3rd, 4th the motion? Please speak up if this would be of interest.
Cindy’s last post..Polymer Clay Tutorial About Adding Fimo Cane Slices to Round Beads
Great idea for us to be able to post our pics,it would help in so many ways,not only to gage our own work with other beginners but also to get feedback from the pros in how to improve.
Thanks Andrea for your comments! Any one else?
Cindy Lietz’s last blog post..Premo Clay Flower Pendant Necklace Project with Vintage Glass Beads
Hi Cindy, just discovered your site today. I am bare boned beginner! Love the birdie and all your pics are very inspirational. I will also add my vote for a photo upload page if it is possible. Cara
Welcome Cara! Thank you so much for your comment! I’ll add your vote to ‘the pile’!
Cindy Lietz’s last blog post..Blue Flower Earrings – A Jewelry Making Project Using Premo Sculpey
Cindy, I read on your blog, Topic #16 “Sell your stuff.” That lead me your articles about the popularity of “Bird” designs. Well guess what happened today? I received an answer to a email I sent to Christi Friesen (most people I guess know her work). Anyway . . . I asked her when she might do a book on “Birds?” She told me in January or February of next year, hopefully.
Well, first of all I was so pleased that such an accomplished and well known Polymer clay artist would take the time to personally answer me. Then, the fact that she will have a book out soon on how to create her wonderful birds.
I just happened to love birds in all mediums; I get an answer from her, then read your great article on etsy.com as a source for pricing and the popularity of bird designs. Kinda spooky huh?
I had heard about etsy.com but never looked into it until now. Thanks, you did it again
D.McLelland
Well Debbie, it looks like the Universe has given you a suggestion on what to make with your clay! When you do make some bird jewelry, do send me a picture… I’d love to see what you make!
Hi Cindy! Your spoons are soooooo beautiful. Did you paint directly on the clay?
Hi Stephanie! That isn’t actually paint, it is all made of clay! The technique is called a polymer clay cane. The picture goes through the length of a log of clay, much like those slice and bake cookies with the pictures inside. Then you slice off pieces of the cane to add to beads and pendants.
It is a cool thing to learn how to make. To see more examples of canes, click the link by my name.
Such a cute little birdie! Birds are always inspirational, although I think now one of the big things is owls. I remember in the 70’s my mom had a HUGE thing for owls, and I made them with macrame, and all kinds of other crafts. I think I’ll try to make an owl cane, or at least do some stamping, painting, carving… we’ll see…
I wanted to mention, after seeing the beautiful pendant above with the spoon bezel, that Cindy has created a Polymer Clay Tutorial on making silver spoon bails for jewelry [VIDEO].
The link will take you to a video preview of the tutorial, as well as comments and feedback on it from members. There are discussions about where to find spoons, how to bend them, and some beautiful examples, as well. Check it out, if you haven’t already. Have fun creating whatever bird, or anything other “flight” of fancy! (sorry for the pun. ;D )
My daughter has made a 4 inch long and 4 inch across Mockingjay figurine out os Sculpey that she needs to bake. I am unsure how long to bake it since the body of the bird is probably 3/4 – 1 inch thick but the beak she fashioned is about 1/8 thick. I don’t want to over bake it, but I am afraid the body will not be cooked if I bake it based on the beak thickness. I just found your site and thought you might be able to help us with this dilemma. If I need to bake it an hour or more, I would rather do it in the morning. Can we leave it unbaked overnight?
Hi Anita, sorry to take so long to respond to your question. Yes you can leave it unbaked for as many days as you want, as long as it isn’t sitting on anything absorb ant. I would bake her project for an hour to ensure that it will not break after baking. You should lay it on a ceramic tile with some office paper on it and cover it with a piece of parchment paper or office paper to prevent it from scorching. Make sure to use an oven thermometer, since most ovens are wrong. Unfortunately Sculpey is the most brittle of all the clays so it needs to be baked longer but it can darken if the temp gets too high so make sure you are monitoring the project while it is baking. For the next project she does, use Premo clay. It is a higher quality and has less issues with darkening and is way stronger. To learn more about baking, use the search box at the top of the page. Let us know how it goes. Good luck!