Babushka Earrings

I made up the design for these based on some babushka dolls we used to have. I sell a lot of them on my etsy store but they're really easy to make, if a bit fiddly.

I make them out of super sculpey, which is a polymer clay. It's like plasticine you can bake in the oven and it goes hard. I used to make it out of 'original' sculpey which was white, and came in a box like this:

But the craft store doesn't stock it anymore so I now use this stuff which I don't like as much, it's kind of a flesh pink colour and it's softer and more sticky, and also a smaller amount of it costs the same price.

I used to be able to leave white sections blank when I painted the earrings, now I have to paint them white. The injustice.

Anyway so I model a kind of babushka-shaped thing out of sculpey, and add a little squashed round ball on the bottom for the foot:

Then I snip off a little bit of craft wire (which you can get from the jewellery section of most craft shops) and twist it around an earring hook (ditto). When I made the first prototype I just bent it around once and then poked it into my earring, but I found that once it was baked it would just sort of slide out. The twisty shape helps it stay put.

So you just sort of poke that into the top of your earring, smooth it out a bit if you need to, and then pop it into the oven on low for about 15 mins. Next I usually paint the whole thing white, to make a better background for the other colours. Then I get a fineline pen and draw on the detail.


I've tried several kinds of pen and the one I find works best is an artline one like this:
With most other brands the ink runs when you add paint and/or varnish.  Their only flaw is that they tend to run dry very quickly, I don't know whether this is a side effect of drawing on sculpey or because my newsagent has been selling me crappy old pens or something.  Anyway, I have to buy them in scores.

The next step is to paint the colours, which I do with a fine brush and jo sonya acrylic paints. You don't need much, so a little lasts a long time.

I don't actually paint them while they're lying on the table in that awkward manner, but it's quite difficult to paint and photograph at the same time. Anyway the final step is to varnish, which I do with ordinary clear nail varnish. I have tried various different and expensive craft laquers and varnishes and nothing dries as quickly, looks as shiny or is as cheap as nail varnish. So there you have it!