Polymer Clay Lava Beads Tutorial

Here's a simple tutorial for Polymer Clay Lava Beads, perfect if your new to polymer clay and finding your feet with new techniques.

Lava beads are created using polymer clay and sea/rock salt to create a wonderful effect all over the beads resembling lava.

To start all you need is some sea or rock salt, scrap clay and some clay in the chosen colour for your beads.

Polymer Clay Lava Beads Tutorial - Prepare all your items ready to start

My polymer clay beads ready for salt application

 Once you've created your beads using your scrap clay and outer colour layer (above), start applying the sea salt to your beads by either rolling and squishing the salt into your clay or applying the salt to the beads by hand, you will probably find that your beads will lose there desired shape as you apply the salt into the clay as seen below.

 

My Polymer Clay Lava Beads with sea salt applied loses its shape

 Because I want my beads to be round I gently re-rolled them between my palms this helped to embed the sea salt deeper into the beads which creates a deeper effect, it also give you the opportunity to see if you want to apply more salt to any large gaps on the beads.

 

My polymer clay lava beads have been re rolled, embedding the sea salt

Once your happy with your beads its time to create your bead holes and cook them.  Once they are cooked and cooled simply place the beads into a glass of water and leave them to allow the sea salt to dissolve.

My polymer clay lava beads placed in water to dissolve the salt

It does'nt take long for the salt to dissolve so dry your beads off and they will be ready to use, here's how mine turned out below.

My Polymer Clay Lava Beads

This is quite a nice and simple technique which I plan to use for some future designs.

I would also like to take the opportunity to apologise for my photo quality here, unfortunately my camera decided to die on me and I had to use my phone, sorry.

This post is part of Handmade Monday don't forget to check out more great crafter's over on Handmade Harbours Handmade Monday