Polaroid picture charm!

I’ve mentioned in past posts that I used to have an Etsy shop, and I used to sell these polaroid charms. They were a very big hit! I actually got the idea from another listing I saw on Etsy, but it was metal (and expensive), so I recreated it using polymer clay. The metal charm looked nice, but this actually looks like a polaroid, since I used white clay.

 

 

I started out by rolling out my clay really thin.

 

This is how thin it should be, as you’ll be layering it.

 

I made these guides from paper to lay over the clay and cut around them.

 

Next, I repeated the first few steps to make another square, and placed another paper guide for the window where my picture will go.

 

This part is tricky because it’s really easy to break the thin sides of the window.

 

Once the window was cut out, I placed it on top of the other square I cut out, pushing gently to fuse them together.

 

There will be little gaps around all the edges, that’s fine, because I fill them in later. I baked it in my preheated toaster oven at 275F for 10 minutes.

 

Then, I filled in the gaps with some more polymer clay and a knife like spackling a wall. Once it was all filled, I baked it for another 5-10 minutes.

 

Once the charm was all baked, I filed the sides to make it nice and clean looking, and to get rid of any little dust particles that might have gotten into the clay when I rolled it out. If  you want to make it a ring, you could glue a ring base down on the back now.

 

Or, if you wanted to make it a necklace, like I did, you could glue a bail on. You could also poke a hole through the top for a jump ring before you bake it, if you don’t have bails. I liked mine at an angle, so I glued my bail on the top left corner. This glue works great! It’s just really smelly so don’t inhale as your gluing!

 

Last but not least, I put my picture in the window and wrote on the bottom. If you wanted it to be permanent, you could put resin over the picture, but I like to change mine around so I just tape mine in. When I want to change what it says, I just file away the words.

*Keep in mind* you could glue a magnet on the back as well! You could scale it up too!

Until tomorrow!!

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