A New Method in Polymer Clay

Besides all the crochet hooks, which are proving really popular, I decided to try to work out how to do polymer appliqué. First of all I had to find out what this beautiful technique was called, which took a bit of doing, but I had that ‘Of course!!!’ moment on discovering it was actually Polymer Applique.

This is the thing with polymer clay, you can use it to mimic so many other techniques usually used in other media, such as the Mokume Gane used in Japanese metalwork, which easily lends itself to clay. This has a result not dissimilar to embroidery.

Now, usually once you start searching the internet, you can usually find instructions on just about anything, but I found nothing at all, which was frustrating. Not even the Russian blogs mentioned any method, although there were plenty of stunning examples. (they are so good over there aren’t they?) There were a few paid tutorials, but as usual I like the challenge of working it out for myself. However, by chance I came across a blog which showed pictures of appliqué work at a meeting. No detailed instructions but enough to tell me roughly how it was done. The only tool really needed is a needle-tool, used to press the tiny petals and leaves into the clay base, adding fine shape and texture.

After a bit of practise, here are the results.

  

 

I also decided this would work well with my candle holders too, and even I’m amazed at the results.

All of this is very time consuming as each petal and leaf is applied individually, with a fine needle tool, but I found it was more than worth it with the end result.