I’ve love working with polymer clay. The product is frankly revolutionary, it is soft to work and holds very fine marks, but bakes and sets as a hard plastic in an ordinary oven. It is very light too which means even large pendants wont drag on your neck or large earrings wont hurt to wear. PMC can be horribly expensive to get into, and for people like who fatigue quickly and have issues with joint pain, some varieties are just too firm to easily work with. I get around these issues by using only a single colour of soft PMC called Super Sculpey. I then get out my fine brushes and paint the fired pendants by hand, which I love doing. Modelling is incredibly enjoyable, sculpture on a tiny scale which is perfect for my circumstances.

Pendant, hand painted in acrylic, with a labradorite cabochon and seed pearls.

Pendant, hand painted in acrylics, freshwater pearl, swarovski crystals, paua shell.

Here’s some of my early work, with a 50c coin for size comparison; the little owl was my very first PMC creation:

Here’s some close ups:

Flying owl

Leaping cat