Tutorial ~ How to Make Stamped Clay Charms

Recently, I've been into polymer clay. Which is sortof a good thing, because I was obsessed with it probably 1.5 years ago, and bought a big pack of sculpey in lots of colors which I used for a week and put in a cabinet. I even bought the pasta machine and everything! :D So I have made a goal this year to try to actually use all of the junk laying/piled in the art cabinet (our whole island cabinets are our art cabinets). you'd think that would be easy for me, but it's not. I always want to go buy something new to make something new. But no, I PROMISE (ugh, I can't believe I'm doing this!) to use the stuff in our art cabinets and not buy (alot?!?!) of new art stuff! So here is part 1 of my journey to use all of the old stuff:













A lovely tutorial on how to make stamped clay charms. It all started at Michaels, when I saw these stamps (top left) in the $1 section. I've been wanting to get the metal stamping stuff for a while, but DANG are they expensive! So I'm making myself wait. Anyway, I saw these letter stamps, and I knew I had to buy at least one (they have like a trillion fonts!) even though I had no plan for them. I'm actually glad I bought them because I came up with the most brilliant plan: to make clay neclace charms! :D Just like the metal ones, but cheaper! (and well.... not metal) So here is the tutorial:









you will need:









Small cookie cutter




X-acto knife




Toothpick




Stamp set




Polymer clay





jump ring/s







Condition and roll out your clay. I use my pasta machine for that. Now cut out your shape using the cookie cutter or you can free hand it using your X-acto knife.

Use your tooth pick (I sharpen my toothpick)to poke a whole where you want the top of the necklace or charm to be.

This is optional, but I reccomend it. Cut out a few quick shapes and try a few different fonts etc and get used to stamping.

Use the stamp you decided on and center the stamp. You have to look from down low so you can see if the letter is centered. That's the only problem with $1 stamps :P

Bake the stamp according to manufacturers rules, if you can't find them or whatever, go with 250 degrees for about 15 minutes.

Once the charm has cooled, put a large jump ring in the hole and wear as a necklace, use it for an animal tag, make a bunch and make a charm bracelet, you can do so much with these! I'll edit this a little later and show you some more I made and I'm going to test if modge podge/ polyurethane/ ? will make it stronger. So if you would like to know the results of my test, either check back, or comment and I'll let you know on your blog when I edit it.

Alyssa