Polymer clay Plumeria Flower tutorial

EDIT!!!!: This tutorial is now out of date! I've re-made this tutorial. You can find the up to date version here.

These flowers are super easy to make. All you need is some clay in one colour for the petals, a craft knife/blade, colourful chalk pastels, a paint brush and a teaspoon (preferably one you don't need for food!).






Shaping the petals 

You'll want to start by rolling out the clay. You don't need to use bright pink clay, of course, but I've made them in a lot of other colours already.




Cut the clay in to five pieces, they don't have to be the exact same size, but make sure they're pretty much the same size. Now roll them in to little balls, they don't all have to be exact.

Now for the teaspoon :D You can use a dessert spoon if you're making a bigger flower, but again, make sure you don't need it for food!!!
Use it to squash down the clay and use your fingers to shape it in to a petal.

Note that it doesn't have to be a perfect petal shape, no flower is perfect!


Now you should have this shape :) You need to repeat it on all of the other petals. If you want, you can make a six petal flower or a four petal flower. Just make more petals now :D You can make as much as you like, but I like the five petal flowers the best.

If this technique isn't working for you, you can get petal shaped cookie cutters. Just roll out the clay and cut out your petals. Shape them and you'll get a similar effect. I don't use cookie cutters for clay though... I see it as cheating, to be honest :)













Adding another colour

You could just put the petals together to make the flower shape now if you want, but I like to use chalk to add another colour. You could also bake your flower now, then use acrylic paints. However, they leave a shine and flowers aren't shiny!

Take a scrap piece of paper and get out your piece of chalk and craft knife/blade.

Use your craft knife to scrape some chalk on to the bottom of the petal (the narrower part)

Now use your paint brush to spread the chalk so that you get a gradient effect.

Repeat on all the petals.

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Making the flower shape

Now for the easy part :)

You can add some TLS/liquid clay to help the petals stick together.

Now you need to lay the petals over each other so you get the plumeria flower shape....







You could add a little more chalk, or add another colour, at this point. You could also add an eye pin (depending on what you're going to use it as). If you want to add one, put a little scrap clay on the back and put your eye pin through that. DON'T put it through one of the petals!

Now bake according to the instructions on the pack. I used Fimo clay, so I baked it for 15 minutes as it's only a thin piece of clay. As for the temperature, I live in the UK  and have a gas oven, so my oven doesn't use the same temperature as the US ones... I cook mine on gas mark 1/2 or 1.

Suggestions...

I've made these in lots of colours. The most effective so far that I've made are using white clay. I wanted to try it with the pink, this time! Try white clay with blue, pink or yellow chalk. If you want, use two colours. I also tried yellow clay with red chalk, and that came out really well.

Also, you could add little rhinestones, like on this one. They look a little like water droplets ;)

That's all, then :) My first tutorial lol XD! Next time, I'll try and make a shorter tutorial, but I wanted to get lots and lots of detail in.

You can find my new updated tutorial here.