As a polymer clay bead artist, I hope to inform and educate beaders of the beauty and versatility of using polymer clay in their beadwork designs.  It's surprisingly lightweight, extremely durable and can be found in an endless range of styles from ancient to modern inspired beads. Polymer clay is a man-made material that bead artists have been exploring for about 20 years.  It was developed in Germany for doll makers, but thanks to pioneering artists in the 1980s, polymer clay has become a very accessible and popular arts & crafts medium.

Bead stores and catalogs often carry commercially produced polymer clay beads in brightly colored tubes and picture beads with the likes of dolphins jumping over rainbows.  This type of  bead is also produced by American craftspeople, like  ebay sellers, twin sisters Kitty and Cathy Mathewson.

Kitty and Cathy make their own cane for beads featuring several designs. The winning bidder can decide hole orientation and size.

 If this is your only impression of polymer clay, there is a whole new world of beads for you to explore, polymer clay art beads.

You may have seen simple blocks of brightly colored clay called Fimo, Premo or Sculpey.  The artist uses a minimal collection of tools.  Most professionals will have a pasta machine for rolling thin layers of clay, a toaster oven to cure this low-fire modern marvel and a sharp medical tissue blade for cutting the paper thin layers. While the set up of the polymer clay bead maker is modest and easily obtained at your local crafts store, anyone who has tried to make their first beads knows this material takes skill and practice to achieve consistent and professional results. Each color on the beads are separate layers of clay, every bead having many layers. Between mixing colors, designing the different elements that make up the beads and the finishing process of sanding or buffing, each bead has been labored over by the artist.  Depending on the skill of the designer and difficulty of the technique, some beads can be made in 15 minutes while others will take hours.  The cost of the beads are due to the labor and artistic skill of the bead artist.  In the same fashion as lampwork glass beadmakers, as an artist develops and becomes more in demand, their beads fetch higher prices at auctions.

I will cover the three most popular bead styles that artists are working in and that are readily available online.  These styles can be broken down into faux beads, millifiori style beads and surface embellished beads.   While polymer clay beads are as infinite as the material itself, this is a general classification of the most common types of beads. All of these styles can be easily found at an online auction site, justbeads which is a great place to find unique work offered by many talented artists.  

Polymer clay is a clever chameleon that can be sculpted and manipulated to resemble stones such as turquoise, coral, ivory, and other natural materials.  Limited only by the artist's vision, stones can be conjured up by the artist without any lapidary skills at all.  These beads are like miniature sculptures.  Lampwork and Dichroic glass is another material that polymer clay can mimic.  Artists use gold leaf, metallic paint and liquid clay to create lightweight beads that are as intricate and beautiful as their glass counterparts.

Faux dichroic glass beads by bead artist, Beverly Herman, website, No Easy Beads

Millifiori, which literally means "thousand flowers",  is a technique borrowed from the Venetian glass workers.  These beads start out as little lumps of colored clay.  The clay is rolled into tubes of designs called canes. These canes are sliced paper thin and transferred to the clay beads. The canes form the designs and patterns. Each color is a separate piece of clay gently rolled onto the bead.  This is the technique I use most frequently.

My colors are first custom mixed, much like a painter mixes their palette.  The resulting beads are sophisticated studies of subtle color combinations.  My beads are offered at justbeads.

 
The final technique most commonly used, surface embellishment, covers a variety of applications to the surface of the clay: stamping, painting, drawing, and transferring images.  

Anything an artist can do to a piece of paper, they can do to this modern clay.   Bead artists can draw images on the clay.  Some use rubber stamps to embellish the surface. The clay can be manipulated into a collage type bead.   Mixing these unique finds can add a new level of interest to a jewelry designer's  work.  The bead to the left is one I finished with a stamp.

Polymer clay beads are found with a number of different finishes.  Some artists varnish and polish the beads for added shine; others let their natural matte finish stand.

The colors of the beads will not fade or rub off over time and can be used in necklaces, earrings and bracelets.  Many artists make beads with larger holes so they can be used with elaborate beading techniques, made into simple pendants or strung with other beads.

This is an introduction to the types of  polymer clay beads. From the very basic to the most sophisticated collector's beads, polymer clay beads are an exciting new design element for an artist to discover.  There are master polymer clay bead artists  featured in publications such as Ornament and Bead & Button Magazines.  These artists have forged new ground in polymer clay beadmaking.  For more information on the stars of the polymer clay world, please visit the National Polymer Clay Guild website
 

Resources:

The New Clay, by Nan Roche