How to make hair out of clay?

How do you make those clay plumeria flowers you see on necklaces and hair pins?

• I know how to make the shape and I have the clay but I can't figure out for the life of me how to get the colors right. I'd like make it look like this, http://beadingdaily.com/cfs-filesystemfile.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Discussions.Components.Files/7/0245.il_5F00_fullxfull.130619080.jpg but I'm open to whatever versions you may have.

• Answer:

  Your link didn't work but I found this at the site: http://beadingdaily.com/forums/p/6826/68889.aspx#68889 She says she bought the flowers as "Fimo plumeria" but most people who make those kinds of flowers use a cornstarch-based air-dry clay ("cold porcelain," etc). They can certainly be made with polymer clay though**, they just won't have the same exact characteristics re flexibilility, etc. ** including either of the Fimo lines... the FimoClassic colors won't be that bright and pure (but could always be painted on after curing with acrylic paints or alcohol inks), and the FimoSoft clays won't be as strong so the petals could break if too thin or if stressed a lot. Other brands/lines of polymer clay would work better both for their purer colors and for strength-when-thin, like Kato Polyclay, Premo, and Cernit (which is a tad translucent if no white clay or oil paint is added to opaque it). You might want to check out the lessons and tips on making flowers from polymer clay though at my polymer clay "encyclopedia" site.... the 3-D "sculpted" flowers would be on this page: http://glassattic.com/polymer/sculpture.htm (click on the "Flowers & Leaves" category) As for color, you can use polymer colors straight from the package, or mix them together to get new colors, or use colorants like artist's oil paints and alcohol inks and various kinds of powdered pigments to color white clays, or to color other colors. There's much more info on all that on these pages: http://glassattic.com/polymer/color.htm http://glassattic.com/polymer/paints.htm http://glassattic.com/polymer/letters_inks.htm > Alcohol Inks The effect created by the petals may be a "cane" though rather than just freehand sculpted. Many flower petals and leaves are made from "canes" in polymer clay whether they're sculpted flowers or caned flowers. If you're interested in that general idea, check out this page too: http://glassattic.com/polymer/canes--instructions.htm > Flowers If you want to put items made from polymer clay onto jewelry, etc., check out this page too for the hair jewelry: http://glassattic.com/polymer/jewelry.htm > Barrettes, etc (...other jewelry pages at the site cover Pendants, Beads, Miniatures, etc...look in the alphabetical navigation bar to click on them) HTH, Diane B.