Faux Stone Necklace by Irit Shalom

Faux Stone Necklace

Designed by Irit Shalom

Hello my dear crafty friends and welcome to my Makin's Clay® July blog post.

July is a summer time. And summer time means shore, sea, beach, pebbles and even lovely stones. Lately, I see a lot of stone painted projects over the web. But how about stone jewelry? Not sure my poor neck can stand the weight of stones. And on the other side to drill the holes in stones? Mission impossible even for the dentist.

But then, how about making some clay faux stones? Light weight, easy made holes and still looks like the real thing. Almost a real thing.

So here is my tutorial about making Faux Stones and even arranging them into a lovely jewelry piece.

Products used:

Makin's Clay® -  White

                          -  Round cutters

                          - Roller tool 

Acrylic paints- yellow, brown, black- Plaid

Rubber Dance  Celestial images stamp

Yellow/golden, black mist

Beads, jewelry findings, toothpicks

 Step by step instructions:

1. Add a few drops of yellow, burnt sienna and black acrylic to a half of small white air dry clay package.

Please let me say that on the photo there is too much paint... I just wanted to show it and then I realized that it's much too much for the color I want to get and I just cleaned 3/4 of the paint from the clay before I mixed it. Another tip: when mixing acrylic with Makin's Clay® - use gloves, unless you want your hands and fingernails to become a total mess.  (Another tip - you can also begin the mixing process in a plastic zip lock bag to help keep your hands clean.  Find our tutorial on mixing Makin's Clay® with paint here on our blog).  See if you get the light grey stone color and if not- add more black, more brown and maybe even more yellow until you really like the stone color you have.  

2. Using a 2 1/2 '' circle cutter make the basic circle shape. I didn't have this size of a round cutter so I just used a glass. Worked great! Then I used the smallest Makin's® Circle cutter and made the pendant hole on the top as shown. Keep the cur out pieces for the future use as we are going to make some stone beads too. Stamp the uninked rubber stamp over the circle clay piece and let it dry 24 hours. Paint over the dry stamped clay with black acrylic paint and wipe it from the surface, leaving only the stamped image with black paint.

Make some stone shaped beads from your mixed clay. Try to keep the natural pebbles shape and make a hole from side to side, keeping the tooth pick inside the bead until it's totally dry and hard (approximately 24 hours).

3. Make the necklace with your faux stone beads and pendant. Add some real beads such as hematite and amber for added interest.  Mist the clay beads with black and golden mists. Do not cover with resin finish! The real stones are not shiny. And we want our faux one to be as real as possible.