5 Techniques for Making Polymer Jewelry

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Are you looking for an affordable, versatile, forgiving medium to add to your jewelry-making toolbox? I’ll just say it: Polymer is the most versatile jewelry-making material in the whole world. It can resemble about any other jewelry-making material. This type of clay can also be combined with other jewelry supplies easily including wire, metal, resin, fibers and wood. Just about anything can be used to create amazing polymer clay jewelry designs!

All photos are from Lynn Yuhr’s Bead Fest PA 2022 classes. Lynn is inspired by the vivid colors that surround her home in Miami, Florida. She uses them as a focal point in her contemporary jewelry, art journals, and mixed-media endeavors. She loves being creative and is passionate about polymer. Lynn shares her inspiration, polymer experience, travel, and other artistic pursuits on her studio blog, Flying Squirrel Studio, and on Instagram.

As more polymer varieties become available, more artisan jewelers are discovering clay’s potential and making gallery-quality clay jewelry. New polymer tools are readily available, too, including findings that created specifically for use with polymer. Because it’s so easy to model and mold, polymer can become any shape or object you need it to be and takes texture like a dream. It’s durable when cured and sealed, and with a color palette that puts the Crayola big box of 64 to shame, polymer is ideal for jewelry-making.

Another advantage of working with polymer is that there are multiple ways to use it to deliver stunning results. For all of these possibilities, there are five basic processes in polymer jewelry-making that you need to follow for beautiful, durable pieces.

5 Basic Polymer Clay Jewelry Techniques

1. Conditioning

Polymer must be conditioned to soften the clay and make it easier to work with. To condition clay, knead it with your hands to warm it. Then flatten it until it’s thin enough to pass through a clay-dedicated pasta machine. Folding and passing polymer through a pasta machine repeatedly, raising the setting each time, conditions clay beautifully and prepares it for making polymer jewelry. If you don’t have a pasta machine or prefer not to use one, you can condition polymer by hand and with a rolling pin, folding and rerolling it repeatedly. Add heat with a hair dryer or heat lamp to relax the clay and make it easier to condition. Polymer expert Lisa Pavelka recommends conditioning light polymer colors first and then the darker ones. Clean your hands between colors with baby wipes to prevent cross-contamination of colors between clays.

2. Color-Making

I think one of polymer’s most appealing features is color. It comes in so many colors and can be blended into a limitless variety of more colors. Mix polymer colors the same way you condition the clay; simply combine two or more colors in your hands and go through the conditioning process to blend until you achieve the desired color or effect (such as marbling). Skinner blends are popular polymer creations that blend from one color into another one or with white to resemble ombre designs.

3. Forming and Shaping

This is the fun part. You can carve clay, ruffle it, weave it, mold it, layer it, texture it, stamp it, coil it … anything goes, really! Ceramic tiles and wax paper are ideal surfaces on which to work with polymer clay. One of the most creative polymer techniques is caning, which creates designs in snakes or logs of clay by rolling logs of different clay colors and arranging them in a particular way. Cane slices show off those designs, such as flowers, stars, bull’s-eyes or random colorful patterns—even animals and faces.

4. Curing

To harden and preserve your polymer jewelry creations, cure clay in a clay-dedicated small toaster oven (this will be one of your most important polymer tools). Bake the clay on parchment paper on cardboard or on a ceramic tile. Note that curing clay directly on metal will create shiny spots on it. Preheat the oven to 250° F first, and then cure your polymer pieces for 30 to 60 minutes between 250° and 265° F. Note: Polymer can melt and/or release toxic smoke if its temperature goes above 265° F. Make sure you have a good oven thermometer for a temperature gauge (don’t rely on the oven’s setting to tell you the temperature) and watch it carefully. Also, always work in an area with good ventilation.

5. Finishing

After your polymer jewelry masterpieces are cured and cooled, they need to be finished like any other jewelry creation. Finishing polymer means wet sanding with waterproof sandpaper or a sanding sponge, using progressively finer grits, and then dry polishing with a rotary tool or something similar and a cloth buffing wheel. Follow that by coating with a thin layer of varnish or clear sealant if you want to further protect it and/or add shine to highlight certain areas.

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Those five basic jewelry-making techniques can lead to all kinds of beautiful polymer creations. As you can see, the steps to make clay jewelry at home are quite easy, and you don’t need a lot of fancy equipment to do it. And because the clay is so affordable, you can experiment to your heart’s content. Have fun!

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Originally published 11/8/2016. Updated 5/26/2022.

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