Succulents are so popular right now. I’ve always had them in my house because they are so cute and my black thumb only kills about half. I decided to try my hand at making succulent earrings with polymer clay after I saw someone making them for dollhouse decorations. For those that want a little more help with this project check out the video at the end of this post.
First off, I use Premo polymer clay. It’s made by Sculpey but seems to be much more durable than their other clays. I do use other clay brands but when it’s for something wearable or something that won’t just be sitting on a shelf I use Premo. Also, this post and the video show me using some random gold toned earring posts. For the ones in my Etsy shop I bought some titanium posts because of their hypoallergenic qualities. Whatever you use, get ones with 6 mm pads. That’ll give you enough surface area. For the clay mix recipes I’ll use the Premo names for them. I hope they aren’t discontinued colors because I have quite a few bars in my studio that are pretty old that I still use.
Let’s start with the terracotta mix. I used 2 parts Raw Sienna + 1 part Cadmium Red + 1 1/2 parts white + 1 part yellow. I only added about 1/2 of the yellow and only 1 part white at first. I wasn’t satisfied with the color so I added a bit more. Terracotta comes in different shades in real life so if you have some in your possession you really like the color of sit with it in front of you while you mix and adjust accordingly. I chopped up the clays with my clay blade then squished the bits together until they stuck enough to get through the pasta machine (You can see an example of a shop in the third picture down). I used the thickest setting, ran it through, folded the clay in half and fed it through again fold side down. I did this over and over until the clay was mixed. I then figured out how thick I wanted the earring base and used that clay machine setting. I don’t know if you have a machine or which brand if you do, so I made sure the terracotta was rolled to about 3 mm thick. You can see the mix as I was running it through the machine below.
Next, I worked on the leaf colors. I actually made two colors but this green was the base for both. I used 3 parts Translucent +1 part Spanish Olive + 1 part Wasabi. I chopped and mixed and rolled it until I had about a 2 mm thick sheet.
After I made the green base I took about half of that mix and added about 1/2 a part of both Sea Green and Turquoise to get a darker, bluer shade of green. I added about another 1/2 part of Translucent as well. I rolled that mix to about a 2 mm sheet.
I decided to make these earrings to look like a top down view of a succulent in its terracotta pot. So, I took one of my Kemper cutters and cut two 12 mm wide circles. I used plastic wrap on the clay so that the top edge would have a rounded look without me having to smooth it with my fingers. It’s so much easier to keep consistent using the plastic wrap. You might need to pick some pieces off of the clay but it’s never marred the surface for me.
Once you have your circles, use a clay blade to remove them from your work surface and smooth out the bottoms a bit. You can also flip them over and center your earring post on the back and make a slight impression so you can attach them easier later. Flip them back over and grab your dirt mix. I used 1 part Burnt Umber + 1/4 part Black to start. I added smidgens of black until it was a nice top soil color. Take that mix and roll it out. Use a much smaller Kemper tool to cut a circle and then flatten that to about 10 mm wide. You don’t want too much clay for dirt but you need enough that you can texture it.
Take a needle tool and start poking holes everywhere in the dirt clay. Watch the edges. You want texture but you don’t want to mark up your terracotta.
Once you have holes everywhere start swirling your needle tool to break it up. Be mindful of any bits of clay that fall off. Keep swirling and you’ll notice it really looks like dirt.
Press the clay lightly with your finger to keep the dirt on place, but not enough to flatten the texture.
Here’s where you might want to start referring to the video. I thought I had taken more pictures than this but I was mixing up what I had done on video with what I had taken as stills. Oh well. For any type of succulent you want to make start with the 2 mm sheet of clay of whichever color you want to start with. If you want pointy leaves use a teardrop shaped cutter. If you want rounded leaves, use the circle. I used the smallest cutters I had because these earrings are tiny. I used the small circle to cut a base for the plant. I flattened it a tiny bit. I then cut 5 leaf shapes from the thicker clay. For the pointy leaves I softened the edges with my fingers. For the round leaves I balled them up and shaped them into ovals.
I used one of my ball tools to attach the leaves to the base. For each type I made I used 5 leaves in a circle as my base layer.
When the first 5 leaves were attached I took the clay sheet and rolled a thinner sheet, around 1 mm thick, and used that for my subsequent leaves. I used whatever shaped cutter I started with and cut 10 more leaves just to make sure I had enough. I then shaped the leaves with my fingers again and attached the thinner second layer with my ball tool. I tried to keep them standing up a bit more than the first layer. For the third layer and the center I cut the remaining leaves in half and reshaped them. I then used the ball tool to attach those. For the center, I took two or three leaves and attached their bases together by squishing the bottoms with my fingers, careful not to ruin the leaf shape. I then used the smallest ball tool I had and attached the center. I then picked up the entire plant and squished it slightly to cover up any marks from my tools. On the rounded plant I used a small ball tool and created an impression at the tips of the leaves for visual interest. I attached the plant to the dirt by using a small dot of Translucent Liquid Sculpey. This works so much better than waiting to glue it on after baking. The TLS bonds the two clay pieces together into something much less likely to break later.
After attaching the plant and the pot, I shaved some pastel chalks and used a soft brush to color the leaf edges. You can see the result below. I also shaved some terracotta colored chalk and brushed the pot before the leaves so that the pink from the leaves wouldn’t stain the pot.
Here is a close up with a ruler so you can get an idea of the size.
I then set the pieces on another tile inside two cheap aluminum baking pans. I put them in the oven then set it to 275° while setting the timer to 45 minutes. I let the clay come up to temperature with the oven because I used translucent clay and I wanted to avoid plaquing (small, half moon shapes that seem to only appear in the translucent clays). I’m not sure if slow heating and slow cooling really help but I seem to notice it less. Polymer clay is fairly flexible when baking. You can bake for a quite awhile so long as you don’t exceed the recommended temperature by much. But I don’t do extended bakes with translucent colors because it browns easily.
After the clay is baked I mixed up some two-part epoxy to attach the posts. Two-part epoxy is a strong glue and I trust it not to break more than I trust embedding the hardware in the clay. That said, I think I’m also going to try embedding it mostly because I don’t like the glue overflow. Let the epoxy set up before flipping it over. In the picture above you can see me using some pliers to prop up the piece while it sets.
After the glue is completely set I used the Sculpey brand satin glaze to protect the finish. If you find that the chalk pastels weren’t stuck in the clay well enough and the glaze washes it off, use a dry brushing technique to add acrylic paint to the leaf tips instead. Either technique will work. You can also leave it un-glazed if you use paint if you prefer the matte look. You need the glaze to protect the pastels if you choose that process.
I hope you enjoyed the tutorial. Check out the video below for other details not shown here. And if you love the earrings but don’t want to make them yourself I have them for sale in my Etsy shop. I’m only doing limited runs of things so buy them while they are here. I get bored easily.