Ex-Chef Bakes Fimo In Ways You May Never Have Imagined:
Today you get to meet the Mad Scientist of Polymer Clay. Her name is Kimberly and she makes Tentacle Infested Cupcake Charms; Pink Death-By-Chocolate Focal Beads; One-Eyed Space Elephant Necklaces; Industrial Steampunk Hearts; and many more appropriately named polymer clay delights. You can see more of her creations at the Monster Kookies website as well as on Etsy.
Kimberly is a Canadian schooled chef turned polymer clay artist with a twisted sense of humor and a unique sense of design. Her work is so crazy cool. She combines her passion for cake decorating with her demented love of horror films, to create truly one of a kind polymer clay jewelry.
I love her sense of confidence to go where most polymer clay artists would fear to tread! It takes a “special” kind of person to come up with cupcake charms that look like brains, tentacles and intestines… or strawberry cookies with gory slash marks!
Obviously her style won’t appeal to everyone. But because of her passion and commitment, I’m sure she has a following of customers that absolutely love everything she creates.
My personal favorites from Kimberly’s collection are the anatomically correct hearts and the industrial hearts which have a very popular steampunk look to them. They are very intricate and detailed. Bet young doctors and nurses would love to wear these!
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The neat thing about the Monster Kookie jewelry line, is that although it is twisted and spooky, the pieces are also really cute! The kind of stuff a teen (or a playful 42 year old) would love to wear!
Besides being fun, Kimberly’s polymer clay jewelry is also expertly made. This is quality stuff. Well designed and nicely finished. She uses two coats of baked-on varathane for durability.
Her packaging is excellent and shipping costs are reasonable, since she charges only for the first item and any additional items are sent no charge.
Each piece has a great story in the description which goes a long way towards providing that extra charm and appeal. She has made some good sales on Etsy and if she keeps things up, will be an enormous success!
So if your beads ever start to flat line and become lifeless, head over to Monster Kookies for a jolt of curious cupcake charm and twisted tentacle inspiration from a very unique artiste by the name of Kimberly.
I’ve been following MonsterKookies on DeviantArt for a while! I love her stuff! :) She have a new blog => monsterkookies.blogspot.com
Thanks so much Cindy for featuring me – it was truly an unexpected treat! I’ll definately be mentioning this on DA, my site and blog – it’ll definately point some polymer clay artists, your way! And I know that they will have a very fond interest in all the useful information you have, here. :) Thanks again, lady! It was really nice of you!
@Cindy G.: Hi! The DeviantArt site is a perfect hangout for MonsterKookies. Lots of funky artists over there for sure.
@Kimberly: You’re welcome. Cool people like you should be recognized! I followed you on Twitter. If you like, you can follow me back by clicking the “PolymerClayTips” link by my name above. On Twitter I get a chance to share valuable information and links that never end up getting posted here at the blog or at the members library. Lots of behind the scenes things and little tips and tricks.
I was surfing the internet and came across your site, which I found very interesting. I am new at jewelry design … my question to you can I use the clay to make napkin rings and add beads to it. I am not sure what this clay is or it’s limits.
Hi Evelyn, welcome to the site! You can make napkin ring with the clay if you use a strong brand like Premo, Fimo or Kato, make it thick enough and bake it long enough. There are a great deal of things to learn about the clay as far as it’s limits and possibilities.
For lots of free information that will help you learn about working with polymer clay, click the links at the side of the page, scroll through the posts on the home page or type in some keywords in the search box.
For a comprehensive Beginners course on Making Polymer Clay Beads, click the link by my name for more info.
I am interested in making napkin rings, and was wondering if I should use a key ring as a core for the ring part and build the clay around it, or if the clay ring itself would be strong enough. How thick should I make it?
Thanks!
@Lori Trahan: Hi! You could do napkin rings either way, just use a good, strong clay, and bake it properly. (I know, Cindy said the same thing in the comment right above yours, didn’t she? lol I’m a kopykat) Cindy’s course is very good. If you plan to do much work with polymer clay — her course will help take your creations to the next level! Or, like she pointed out, you can search for information here at the blog.
I have never made napkin rings, but polymer is plenty strong enough without using the keyring as a core. People make jewelry-rings & bracelets that are strong enough without one. Unless you have some “wild napkins” (lol) or the if rings will be getting some really rough handling. As far as thickness, they should be made *at least* as thick as the thickest setting on a pasta machine (1/8″ or 3.2 mm,) or even double that. It all depends on how you plan to decorate them. (Will you be adding more clay like with cane slices, or sculptural elements?)
If you decide to use a keyring core, you would have to wrap your clay around a mandrel of some sort, sized just under that of the keyring. There are a couple ways to do this — or maybe you already have this figured out? Let me know if you have more questions, and I can give you some ideas about how I think this could be done. Also, do some looking around the blog. There is alot of information here. I’m still trying to catch up on it all of it myself!
Happy claying!