It's the middle of summer, which means strawberry season is already behind us. This summer has been generous with strawberries and strawberries. Oh, what a berry! Juicy, ripe, sweet, alluring, warmed by the gentle sun. Well, simply delicious! It just begs to be put into your mouth... So that this berry will delight us not only in the summer, but also on cold winter evenings, I suggest making it out of cold porcelain.
To sculpt berries from polymer clay we will need materials:
polymer clay or cold porcelain; oil or acrylic paints in yellow, green and red colors; Johnson Baby cream or oil for lubricating hands, toothpicks, stacks, pliers, wire, PVA glue, molds, cutters, rolling pin, floral tape, scissors, brushes, some foam.
Let's start making strawberries from leaves. For this we need green clay. To get green clay, add a little green oil paint to white clay. Don't forget that after drying the color will become 2-3 tones more saturated.
Knead the clay until it has a uniform color, then roll it out thinly. If you don’t have a pasta machine, the clay can be rolled out in a thick file, greased with cream or butter. Since I don’t have suitable cutters and molds, I decided to use ready-made natural strawberry leaves.
It turned out that these are excellent molds and products using such molds turn out to be more realistic. But to prevent the clay from sticking to the sheet, you must first lubricate it well with oil or cream, and only then apply it to the clay.
We roll it between the files with a rolling pin and cut along the edge with a sharp knife or a stack right on the table.
Before removing the sheet, lightly roll the edges to make it as thin as possible, and then remove it. We got a clear print. If you look closely at the strawberry leaves, you can see that they are slightly curved upward, so to make our leaves look the same, dry them in the mold at an angle. I use a foam tray and it's perfect for this.
If the edges of the leaves are not very neat, they can be corrected after drying with scissors.
Please note that the three top leaves of the strawberry are different: the central one without side cuts, and the two outer ones with side cuts - left and right. Accordingly, you need to sculpt with three different molds. For greater realism, we will sculpt leaves of different sizes and leave them to dry.
In the meantime, let's make preparations for the berries. I make blanks from foam plastic. To do this, I cut out small balls and, using a sharp knife, cutting from all sides, give the shape of a berry.
We wrap the blanks in polymer clay and roll them on all sides. Place the finished berry on a toothpick. Let's make seeds on it using another toothpick. To do this, we make indentations over the entire surface of the berry. To prevent just holes, when pressing, hold the toothpick at an angle, not straight.
Paint the finished berries with red acrylic paint and leave to dry.
We cut the blunt end of the droplet into two parts, one larger, the other smaller. Cut the smaller part in half, and cut the larger part into three. It turns out to be a flower with five petals. Roll out the petals with a toothpick. There is no photo here due to the fact that both hands were busy and I was unable to photograph this process. Leave the finished flowers to dry.
To make branches for berries, take a piece of wire 12-13 cm long and make a loop at the end. Roll the entire surface with green clay. To eliminate unevenness, wet your fingers with water and walk over the entire surface of the branch. Dry.
When all our preparations have dried, we can continue.
Roll a piece of wire about 12 - 15 cm long with green clay from the top down by 3 cm and glue it to the leaf. This way we will make all the leaves and leave them to dry.
Now let's collect the leaves into a branch of three leaves, wrap the tape with tape, then roll it in with polymer clay.
Remove the dried berries from the toothpicks, drop a drop of glue into the holes and glue the branches.
Next, we’ll mold the stalks for the berries. Roll out the green clay thinly and cut out a small circle with scissors. Cut out the cloves along the edge of the circle. Don’t try to make the cloves the same; in strawberries they are also different in nature. To make them thin, roll out the cloves using a toothpick and leave the finished stalks to dry for about half an hour. Then glue them to the berries.
Let's make stamens for flowers. To do this, cut out a ribbon about 0.5 cm wide and about 2.5-3 cm long from a thinly rolled layer of white polymer clay, dry it a little and cut the fringe, not reaching the edge 1-1.5 mm, as thin as possible.
Roll the fringe into a roll, stick it on a branch and fluff it up.
After drying a little, paint the ends with yellow paint, poking with a brush. Glue the stamens onto the flowers. Glue the stems to the flowers, just like on the berries. The berries are ready.
I would like to bring to your attention a very interesting tutorial on how to make a strawberry bush. Moreover, this bush is so plausible that you want to eat the berries! Polymer clay and beautiful hands work wonders!! Master Class
And here are some more plastic products. I hope you find it useful:
Let's start with the leaf.
Roll out the green clay in a pasta machine. Everyone already knows how to color clay. I used green paint.
Very beautiful natural. To cut out we will need a strawberry leaf cutter from the “Strawberry L” set. One is slightly larger for the central leaf, the other is slightly smaller for the side leaves.
Cut it out.
Remove excess polymer clay and place it in an airtight container.
Directly along the rolling film, we press each rounded protrusion of our blanks in the direction from the center to the edge, stretching it a little. We carry out the work with a stack of L balls.
Take a side leaf and cut off one clove. This side of the side sheet will be directed towards the central sheet during assembly. To avoid further confusion, you can skip this point.
We cut each clove exactly in half and use scissors to form the edge of the sheet, making two teeth from one protrusion.
This is what should happen. Place the pieces in film for rolling. Important! Don’t forget to lubricate the film with cream. If the workpiece sticks, you will have to start all over again.
Take a stack of XS balls.
We form and stretch each leaf clove directly on the rolling film.
Important! Do not press the stack too hard. The clay will become thin and the sheet will become almost transparent around the edge.
Carefully remove the finished sheet from the film and transfer it to the “Strawberry Leaf” mold to add texture and veins.
Today we want to invite you to make your own plastic strawberries. Can be used in products or for decoration.
For production you will need:
- plastic of the desired shade of red (I mixed several to get the color of a ripe berry), green (for leaves),
- acrylic paint (I used white),
- tassel,
- toothpick.
We form a berry from red plastic:
Using a toothpick, we make notches (for future seeds).
At the bottom they should be more frequent.
Making leaves. Roll out the green plastic and cut out a circle from it:
Use a knife to cut out the petals, something like this:
We put them on the finger and add liveliness:
Combine with berry:
You can attach fittings.
Bake according to the instructions on the plastic packaging.
Let's get it. Let cool.
We paint with acrylic paint. The paint can be any shade, the seeds are usually yellowish, but I needed white. You can make another one.
We try to ensure that the paint penetrates deep into the holes. Completely paint the berry on all sides.
We wait a little and wipe off the paint with a napkin.
For complete cleanliness, I also wipe with alcohol (in this case, an alcoholic solution of boric acid).
Sand with fine sandpaper if required.
Cover with varnish. We attach the fittings. All!
And I made one berry with a bite.
Bright, juicy and almost natural strawberry berries and flowers, collected in a bracelet and a pair of earrings, will not leave anyone indifferent and will attract glances and bring smiles to passersby. Creating strawberries from polymer clay is very easy and simple, but at the same time interesting and unusual, because you yourself, with your own hands, create such beauty and make jewelry out of it. Strawberries, like other fruit beads, are loved by children, so if you have free time, give it to your child and together create amazing berries, assemble them into decorations and surprise everyone around!
Materials and tools needed when sculpting strawberries:
- 1. Polymer clay red, yellow, green, light green, white, black;
- 2. Blade or stationery knife;
- 3. Rolling pin or pasta machine;
- 4. Cutter in the shape of a five-leaf flower;
- 5. Needle or toothpick;
- 6. Stack with a ball;
- 7. Yellow acrylic paint;
- 8. Connecting rings, two earrings, a chain, studs with a ball, yellow beads, a carabiner lock, an extension;
- 9. Varnish for polymer clay.
So, let's start sculpting:
1. From red polymer clay, form a large droplet, into which, from the wide part, you need to press a toothpick inside the droplet. Using a knitting needle or a blunt toothpick, you need to make indentations in a random order on the surface of the droplet that will imitate the seeds in the berry.
2. Make a lot of strawberries of different shapes and sizes so that the final product is voluminous and not empty.
3. Roll out a layer of light green clay 2-2.5 mm thick and use a small plastic die or cutter in the shape of a five-leaf flower to cut out as many shapes as the number of strawberries you created the day before.
4. Using the edge of a needle or toothpick, make longitudinal indentations along each petal.
5. Using the stem of a metal nail with a loop, pierce the light green sepal right through the center.
6. Remove the toothpick from the berry and insert the cloves with a strung sepal into the recess with a loop inside.
7. Place the strawberry blanks in the oven for roasting. Follow the firing conditions as recommended in the instructions.
8. Take green and yellow clay in equal proportions and lay the plastic diagonally into a rectangular common layer. Using a pasta machine, make a tape with a smooth color transition.
9. The green and yellow ribbon needs to be rolled into a tube so that the yellow color is inside the cane.
10. Shrink the cane into a barrel shape. Roll out using a pasta machine and prepare a layer of black clay 2 mm thick. Cut the yellow-green cane crosswise into strips 3 mm thick and apply a thin layer of black clay to the cut area.
11. Cut the striped cane diagonally and cover the cut area with a layer of black clay.
12. Turn the right half of the striped cane over so that the thin and narrow part is on top and reunite it with the second half of the cane.
13. Pinch the cane, roll it out and stretch it to a diameter of 1.0-1.5 cm, pinch the top of the cane along its entire length with your fingers and cut into leaf-shaped sections.
14. Give each leaf a curved shape and be sure to make a through hole in the central wide part before firing.
15. Prepare a layer of white polymer clay 2-3 mm thick and cut out many white flowers using a five-leaf flower shape or a cutter.
16. Place the flower on your palm and roll each petal into a stack with a ball.
17. Make a thin through hole in the center of each white flower and place the flowers in the oven for firing.
18. After firing, you can lightly tint the indentations of the strawberries with yellow acrylic paint, or you can leave them unchanged. I advise you to coat all plastic products with water-based varnish.
19. You need to collect and attach the leaves into chain links on connecting rings; the flowers are attached like this: take a metal nail with a ball and string a yellow bead onto the pin rod, and then insert the nail into the central hole of the white flower. Using round-nose pliers, make loops from the rods of carnations, both in berries and flowers, and attach them to the chain links, observing the sequence of all elements.
Such a bright set will not go unnoticed by children, because they are the biggest connoisseurs of such playful decorations!
