Extruded Polymer Snowflake Tutorial

 
Polyform, the manufacturer of my favorite polymer clay: Premo Sculpey, hosts a "Make It Your Own" challenge each month. This month the inspiration piece was an extruded snowflake by Phoebe Doehring. You can view her project instructions here: http://www.sculpey.com/projects/extruded-snowflakes

I thought I'd share a quick look at how I adapted the project for my ornament (shown above). I started with the snowflake pattern but instead of circles and curves, I adapted the center to have more of a Pennsylvania Dutch floral pattern.

To create the snowflake, I placed the adapted pattern sheets under a piece of glass from an old picture frame, just like in Phoebe's instructions. I started with extruded strings like she did, but I used a much finer rope of White Transluscent Premo mixed with Premo's Frost White Glitter clay. Because I planned on placing my snowflake on a background, I didn't have to worry about the thickness. I also used my tiny Kemper flower cutter to add delicate accents and cutout shapes.

Once I filled in all of the lines with my extruded clay, I baked the whole thing on the glass sheet for 10 minutes at 270 degrees. I took it out of the oven immediately and used my cutting blade to lift it off the glass and onto an unbaked circle of Premo Blue Granite clay that I had shaped over a glass bowl. I pre-coated the blue circle with liquid polymer to get a good seal before layering the still-warm snowflake on top. Because the extruded snowflake had just come out of the oven, I could gently shape it to the curve of the base.

I baked the piece again for 30 minutes at 270 to cure the snowflake onto its new base. Next time I'd like to transfer the extruded snowflake onto a polymer-covered glass ball ornament. Wouldn't that be pretty?