DIY Faux Ceramic Glazed Beads

My love of clay continues. I’m thinking of writing a pop up disclaimer for the blog. “Warning. High percentage of clay based projects alert. Proceed with caution.” After this polymer clay tutorial today we have an air dry clay tutorial coming up on Thursday and then I promise I will be mixing up the materials for a few DIYs I’m pretty excited about!

But for today lets continue with the faux ceramic look. I love this faux glaze technique I’ve discovered and it’s unbelievably simple. I can’t believe it took me this long to figure it out! I made my beads using a similar technique I used in this post but made these using polymer clay as it sets much quicker in the oven and is much smoother for the glaze to move about on (that’s a good thing!)

Materials

Polymer Clay | Cotton Cord | Acrylic Paint | Polyurethane Craft Varnish – Gloss | Paintbrush

Once you’ve made the beads then prepare the glaze mixing a small amount of colour with the glaze in a separate container. The consistence will vary depending on the strength of colour but with this dark blue I’ve gone for about 10 parts varnish to one part paint. Roughly mix together but let the two parts begin to separate slightly before painting onto the bead. This is how you can achieve a seamless variation in colour as you would with a glaze.

Leave the beads to dry on skewers turning them to stop the varnish from congregating on one side. Once they are dry you can thread them onto the cord! Make the necklace long enough to fit over your head and tie the ends together.

I added that cheeky little white one in the mix it up with an unglazed bead. I really like the contrast it brings and I think that it evens up the necklace nicely.