How to make eye pins

for beading, it's best to use head pins, because they have flat head (but you can get them with different shaped heads). For polymer clay charms, you can use either head pins or eye pins. It's probably best to use head pins on charms that are flat at the bottom, and I find it's best to make the eye at the top after you've baked it. 

To make the eye pin, or make an eye in the head pins, it's very simple. You need round nose pliers to do this, and if you're making your own eye pins, you need wire (preferably quite firm/hard wire) and wire cutters. 

You just basically take the wire and form a loop in the top of it. You can make lots at once, or make them as you need them. I usually make them when I need them, but you can do whatever suits you. 

If, like me, you think this style is way too boring, you can try my style of eye pin! :D

Sorry the quality is so bad, but you basically need to make your normal eye pin, then bend the wire back on itself to make another loop. After this, you make one more between the first two. This one is like the 'eye' where you will put through your jump ring or whatever else you want to put in. The wire should go away from the 'eye' after this. You can cut the end off after this, but make sure you leave a good amount of room on the eye pin so it has enough room to go through the clay charm or whatever else you want to use it for.

Tips on making eye pins stay in polymer clay!

You won't have this problem if you are using head pins, but you can't always use head pins. Some times, you can only really use eye pins. The only real problem is, they tend to fall out. Usually what I do, is I pull the eye pins out after I've baked the clay and put glue on the pin. But there's a better way :)

If you make the pin an L-shape before you put it inside, it shouldn't fall out.

After you've put it in, squeeze the charm around it so it stays in. This is quite a common trick to use, but it is very useful to know :)

polymer clay Christmas Cake

The cake originally said 'Merry Xmas' on it, but now all you can see is the 'merry' part. lol.

Ok, tomorrow I'll be showing you how to make my very weird looking eye pins. :) I've not seen them like that before, so I'm hoping I've come up with an ooak idea lol! The only problem is, I've been having a few issues with my computer (again). Maybe my computer will behave tomorrow!

Polymer clay Biscuit style Christmas tree decorations

Bad quality ftw! (that stands for 'for the win' btw)

Yay! I'm getting more excited about Christmas everyday :D It's not like last year, I spent the whole time super depressed. Anyway, I had the random idea to make these :) I have no idea whether they've already been done or not. But I made them anyway because I felt like I was making ooak tree decorations.

Anyway... It's the 12/12/12 and NOTHING exciting happened. That's right. Just another day. Ugh :( I was expecting at least something to happen! It's kind of depressing to think about, though. To be honest, I wish something did happen. (Now I'm hoping someone will turn around and say "Oh, but something did happen...")

Christmas Lollipop jewellery :)

It's that time of the year now where everywhere you go is all Christmas-y and it takes about five hours to go shopping because there's so much people!

I know it's been done like a million times, but I decided to make some polymer clay lollipops :D

They're in Christmas colours :) Red, green, gold and translucent clay. I'm going to wear them on Christmas Eve, lol!

I haven't got round to making anything else yet, I've been a good girl and done lots of revising :)

I've decided to change the layout of the Blog, too :) I'm in a Christmas mood haha XD

Toffee/candied/candy apples picture

http://sapphirescrafts.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/toffeecandiedcandy-apples.html

Toffee/candied/candy apples

This is probably one of the easiest polymer clay tutorials I've made so far :D

You will need light green polymer clay, a bamboo skewer or a toothpick, and wire cutters. To make the chocolate apple you need brown chalk and TLS (If you don't have TLS, you can paint it). For the toffee apple you can use watered down acrylic paint or clear liquid clay (such as Fimo Deko gel). In this tutorial I will be using the paint.

The apple

First, you need to condition the clay. Then roll it out and cut it in to equal pieces. After this, roll each piece in to a ball shape.

Click to enlarge :)

Use your wire cutters to cut a piece of your skewer/toothpick off. Push this in to the 'apple'. You will probably have to reshape the clay after this.

Don't worry if it's wobbly, we'll sort that out after it's baked :D

The chocolate

Mix brown chalk with TLS. It's very easy :) You want to do this on a scrap piece of paper, preferably one you've already used but don't need (Wasting paper is BAD!). Then, just dip your apple in it. Make sure it's nicely coated with chocolate, but leave a bit of green showing at the top.

If you're wanting to make a toffee apple, and you have fimo deko gel, now would be a good time to use it :) I don't have fimo deko gel, so I can't show you how. Sorry :(

Now you need to bake them according to the instructions on the packet.

One quick tip... The wooden part will probably not stay in the apple after baking. To fix this, take the skewer/toothpick out and cover  the inside and the wood with glue. Anything that dries clear will do :)

Toffee/caramel

You can also use this technique to make caramel, by using light brown paint. You want to water down some acrylic paint, don't add as much water as I did! Dip in your apple and leave it to dry.

NOTE: I haven't got any pictures of the finished product yet. Will upload them later in a separate post :)

...

Yeah, I'm not sure what to call this post... Anyway, I haven't been in the mood to update this week. I've not exactly been myself lately. And my family has 'issues' with Halloween, lol!

One thing I'd like to mention, is the hurricane in America. I can't believe it's really happened. I thought the news people were making up stories, lol. Anyway, I've heard that the damage, especially in New York, is pretty bad. It's crazy, all the pictures we've seen on the news are the complete opposite to what people over here think of when they think of New York. I hope everything gets back to normal soon and that the damage to people's lives aren't that serious. I've never actually left the UK in my life (yet), and the worse thing I've ever seen is probably the flash floods and a relatively small earth quake that happened a few years ago, but nothing that compares to this. I can't imagine how people in America must feel :(

Anyway, on a more positive note, I made this necklace out of polymer clay because I love bats and it was Halloween!

I was going to make a tutorial for it, but I noticed it was way too similar to other tutorials I've seen. It's pretty much straight forward, too. Just draw your image on paper, cut it out and use it as a stencil to cut out your clay. Done :)





I know that most other countries don't celebrate it, but it's Bonfire night on Monday :) To my family, it's A LOT more exciting than Halloween. If you don't know what it is, it's basically a festival to mark the day when the houses of parliament were almost exploded, but the people doing it got caught (hence the fact we burn a little model of a person on a Bonfire). There are firework displays up and down the country, and they never seem to stop exciting people :D The only problem is, people tend to go crazy letting off fireworks (not in a potentially dangerous way!), and so the dog goes completely mad!

One more thing: sorry I haven't made any tutorials :( I felt that everything I'd come up with had been done. But I'll definitely be making some more soon :D