Polymer Clay Tutorial | Faux Turquoise Beads For A Unique Bracelet

An Old Food Processor Will Come In Very Handy For This Faux Stone Project:

Right now I am working on the next set of polymer clay tutorials to add to the video library. Due to popular demand, one of those videos is all about making faux turquoise beads. The technique is really fun… partly because it is so messy! You will need just a few chunks of clay, sand, paint and an old food processor.

Actually, if you don’t have a food processor, that will be OK. I’ll give you some alternative options for doing things manually as well. By the way, once you use a food processor for mixing polymer clay, you can’t go back to using it for food preparation.

Besides being useful for making faux stone beads like Turquoise, Coral, Lapis Lazuli and Granite, the food processor is also really handy for conditioning your polymer clay. You can pick up a used one very inexpensively at thrift shops or garage sales. Perhaps you even have one collecting dust in the back of one of your kitchen cupboards. Maybe it’s time to pull it out and move it to your craft room.

If you would like to purchase tutorial videos on how to use a food processor with polymer clay, check out Back Issue Volume-003 in the members library. The specific titles in the Volume-003 order form are referenced as:

• Vid-003-4 Conditioning Clay with a Food Processor (A)
• Vid-003-5 Conditioning Clay with a Food Processor (B)

Included with these Polymer Clay Food Processor Tutorials are 3 other related videos… plus 5 custom color recipe cards:

• Vid-003-1 Polymer Clay Spice Inclusion Technique
• Vid-003-2 Flower Petal Inclusion Keepsake Beads
• Vid-003-3 Plastic Fishing Tackle Boxes Clay Storage
• Vid-003-4 Conditioning Clay with a Food Processor (A)
• Vid-003-5 Conditioning Clay with a Food Processor (B)
• Recipe-003-1A Grape Vine
  
• Recipe-003-2A Dark Coral
• Recipe-003-3A Blue Green
  
• Recipe-003-4A Light Purple
• Recipe-003-5A Platinum

If you would like to first see preview clips of the Vid-003-4 and Vid-003-4 polymer clay tutorial videos, follow these links:

• A Super Handy Polymer Clay Tool – The Food Processor
• Polymer Clay Tools for Softening Clay Quickly
  

My sister has cerebral palsy & this is a wonderful tip for me to help her condition the clay more easily. She’s also deaf and mentally handicapped so arts & crafts are a way for her to express herself creatively. So thank you for the wonderfully helpful tip!!! ~Abby

This is a great idea… thanks for the tips! ~Susanna

Your article inspired me to try it with a machine I had intended to list on ebay. Worked great on some really hard clay I had, except it quit working on the second or third batch and I cleaned the blades well and it worked again. I think the blades had too much residue on them and it was sticking to them. I need to find that quick mix, I have been using the sculpey softener. ~WhiteHotMagik

Hi Cindy. All the videos I have seen so far are great. Really good information. This one on the food processor was good for me, because I have already burned up a small one. I need to make sure the pieces are small enough so that doesn’t happen again. Never thought of that before! Thanks again. ~Linda

I had purchased some marked down clay in my pre-halfway-know what I am doing days and then since I got started actually working with clay, thought I had wasted my money. This article has made me feel much better about my purchase. Thanks again. ~Marianne