How Many Polymer Clay Bead Shapes Can You Make?

00:00:03 –> 00:00:07 Hi guys, its Cindy Lietz, your Polymer Clay Tutor, and today’s Studio Tip, we’re gonna

00:00:07 –> 00:00:10 see how many bead shapes we can make.

00:00:10 –> 00:00:14 Now I think sometimes, with all the information and all the cool things that you can do out

00:00:14 –> 00:00:19 there with any artistic medium, sometimes you can get a little bit overwhelmed, and

00:00:19 –> 00:00:22 some people get stuck.

00:00:22 –> 00:00:28 I don’t often get stuck, but what you can do if you get stuck is if you just take a

00:00:28 –> 00:00:34 little time to play, and one neat thing you can do is see how many bead shapes you can

00:00:34 –> 00:00:35 make with a chunk of clay.

00:00:35 –> 00:00:40 Now I’ve just got a thing of scrap clay that I’ve been sitting here warming up a

00:00:40 –> 00:00:45 bit, and I’m just going to roll it out into a long log so that I can break off pieces.

00:00:45 –> 00:00:52 And we can make lots and lots of bead shapes just with our hands and no tools at all, and

00:00:52 –> 00:00:59 it’s a nice thing to do because you can really kinda stretch your imagination, and

00:00:59 –> 00:01:02 if it doesn’t look good, you squash it back up, it really doesn’t matter, we’re just

00:01:02 –> 00:01:06 making shapes right now, we’re not making real beads, so I’m just gonna break off

00:01:06 –> 00:01:11 a piece, and I’ll start seeing how many shapes I can make.

00:01:11 –> 00:01:16 So first thing you need to know how to make is a round bead… it’s how you pull all

00:01:16 –> 00:01:22 the creases out and everything, so I’m keeping this one flat and this one rolling in little

00:01:22 –> 00:01:27 circles back and forth…I won’t make any of these shapes perfect, but I’ll just show

00:01:27 –> 00:01:31 you how to make the different ones, okay so you’ve got a round bead, like that.

00:01:31 –> 00:01:39 Now, I’m gonna grab another piece and roll it into a ball, and this time I’m gonna

00:01:39 –> 00:01:45 make a football shape, so instead of holding this one still, I’m gonna move both hands

00:01:45 –> 00:01:50 in a big circle, the bigger the circle, the longer and the skinnier the football shape

00:01:50 –> 00:01:53 is.

00:01:53 –> 00:01:58 How about…okay, here’s another standard, is just to take a piece and roll it into a

00:01:58 –> 00:02:04 tube bead, and these are all kinda typical bead shapes that you’ll see.

00:02:04 –> 00:02:12 And how about if we do that a little bit different into what is called a Torpedo bead… so let

00:02:12 –> 00:02:18 me just roll this into a proper ball, and then this time, when we roll it, we can taper

00:02:18 –> 00:02:26 the ends a little bit, you can do it by using your fingers like that, or you can do it with

00:02:26 –> 00:02:32 your hand, once you get better, use your palm, and you’re just kinda tapering each end

00:02:32 –> 00:02:38 a bit, and leaving it thicker in the middle, so that’s kind of a Torpedo bead.

00:02:38 –> 00:02:46 Now you can go on to some other shapes, let’s make a Teardrop shape, alright so we make

00:02:46 –> 00:02:53 a ball first for a Teardrop, then we’re going to make a little V here and make it

00:02:53 –> 00:03:00 into a Teardrop, now a Teardrop can do a bunch of cool things, you can turn on its end and

00:03:00 –> 00:03:05 flatten it out, and make it more of a cone shape, you can turn it into like a Hershey

00:03:05 –> 00:03:08 Kiss kinda shape.

00:03:08 –> 00:03:16 You could…let’s see, you could elongate that cone, and you could make like a long

00:03:16 –> 00:03:23 kinda spike bead, or dagger bead, or you could even take this end here and you could roll

00:03:23 –> 00:03:31 it up, and make it more into like a shell or a nautilus type bead.

00:03:31 –> 00:03:40 You can do a similar thing by making kind of a taper on both ends and rolling it up…let’s

00:03:40 –> 00:03:52 see, so let’s taper both ends like a dagger, and this time, we can do kind of a scroll

00:03:52 –> 00:04:00 bead, so why don’t I take one end and roll it up, we’ll go this way, and then we could

00:04:00 –> 00:04:10 take the other end and roll the other way like an S or a scroll, that would make a neat

00:04:10 –> 00:04:11 bead.

00:04:11 –> 00:04:16 Alright, what else could we make…you can make like a cube shape, so let me just make

00:04:16 –> 00:04:22 a cube… ball first, to make a cube, we can flatten it in your fingers like this and pinch

00:04:22 –> 00:04:27 it to the side, and then when it bulges out, you pinch on the other side, and you just

00:04:27 –> 00:04:34 kinda keep going back and forth until you have a decent shaped cube, like that.

00:04:34 –> 00:04:40 Then you could also make a rectangular shaped one, so let’s stretch that out a bit, make

00:04:40 –> 00:04:49 it more rectangular…put it on the table here, if you make those corners really sharp,

00:04:49 –> 00:04:56 on your rectangle you can do something cool…just make those corners a little sharper and make

00:04:56 –> 00:05:02 it a little bit longer, you can twist the bead and you get kind of a real cool twisted

00:05:02 –> 00:05:07 looking bead, and if you twist it really hard, it ends up looking like a little piece of

00:05:07 –> 00:05:11 Rotini pasta.

00:05:11 –> 00:05:17 Another thing you can do is you can take that and you can squash it, so you can have a squashed

00:05:17 –> 00:05:25 rotini, and it gives sort of a rippled look, a little bit like fabric or something like

00:05:25 –> 00:05:28 that, so you could play with… like that.

00:05:28 –> 00:05:35 Let’s see, what else could we make, we could take the Teardrop shape again and turn it

00:05:35 –> 00:05:41 into kind of a heart shape…little harder without any tools, but I could stick my fingers

00:05:41 –> 00:05:48 in, maybe see if I can get a heart shape out of this with just my fingers, and you know,

00:05:48 –> 00:05:56 you can play around getting nice shapes like that.

00:05:56 –> 00:06:02 You could…oh another thing you could do is maybe turn this into like a triangle shape,

00:06:02 –> 00:06:10 like that or you could even elongate those little triangle ends, kinda turn them like

00:06:10 –> 00:06:15 that, make long kinda spiky things.

00:06:15 –> 00:06:18 And the more you play with it, and the more you challenge yourself to come up with more

00:06:18 –> 00:06:24 and more different shapes, the more outrageous they’ll get, but you may just trip across

00:06:24 –> 00:06:26 something really, really cool.

00:06:26 –> 00:06:33 Why don’t we kind of see… this is almost like a starfish if it had 5 legs instead,

00:06:33 –> 00:06:38 but why don’t we make kind of…some sort of scroll-y thing, we’ll scroll them up

00:06:38 –> 00:06:51 this way, oh, this starts to look like a tsunami, look at that.

00:06:51 –> 00:06:57 You could make a little house shaped bead, a little…you could make Disc beads, Tube

00:06:57 –> 00:07:05 beads, you can squash them out, you can make Lentil beads, you can make all kinds of…

00:07:05 –> 00:07:09 kinds of shapes, now I could be here all day just making a whole bunch of bead shapes,

00:07:09 –> 00:07:11 but I think you get the idea.

00:07:11 –> 00:07:16 So my challenge for you is to grab a chunk of clay and see how many bead shapes you can

00:07:16 –> 00:07:22 make, I’d love to hear, in the comment section below, how many shapes you manage to make

00:07:22 –> 00:07:24 yourself, just using your hands.

00:07:24 –> 00:07:29 So I hope you liked this video, if you did, please let us know in the comment section

00:07:29 –> 00:07:30 below.

00:07:30 –> 00:07:35 If you have any comments, questions, suggestions, things you would like to see in a future video,

00:07:35 –> 00:07:38 leave those in the comment section as well.

00:07:38 –> 00:07:46 And just so you know, we have a website called polymerclaytutor.com where you can…it’s

00:07:46 –> 00:07:51 just filled with tons and tons of information, including bead shapes and all kinds of different

00:07:51 –> 00:07:56 techniques and things that you can learn from, and if you use the search box you can find

00:07:56 –> 00:07:59 the answers to any of your Polymer clay questions, alright?

00:07:59 –> 00:08:02 So we’ll see you next time and bye for now.

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