Newbie pins

Making pins from polyclay is easy and usually a small enough project for beginners. These pins are made with cutters so the amount of talent needed is zero.

You need:

• Red, green and yellow polyclay
• Old glass bottle, rolling pin or pasta machine
• Drop and "biscuit"-shaped cutters (look at the picture)
• Cocktail stick or knife
• Oven & oven thermometer
• Time
• Pin-back

Condition clays. Work in your hands until the clay is soft, flexible and smooth. Roll one sheet out of green and one of red clay. If you don't have an extra pasta machine to dedicate for polyclay, use an old bottle (or glass) as a rolling pin. Remember: if you use something with polyclay (like a rolling pin from kitchen) you can not use it for food any more.

When you have flat sheets, cut some leaves with drop-cutter. Decorate the surface by drawing veins with cocktail stick. Cut two "biscuit"-shapes and put them on top of each other. (Rotate one slightly so they are not lined up.) Take a small ball of yellow clay and put it inside. Rise the flower's borders a little and put on top of the leaves.

Put in preheated oven (265 Fahrenheit / 130 Celsius) and bake for about 15 minutes. (This is little too long, but I vote for "longer is better") Take out and let cool. Now take your pin-back and a small amount of polyclay. Roll two snakes from polyclay and then use them to attach the pin-back to your pin. Put back in the oven for another 15 minutes.