Jewelry class and Polymer clay!

Art Enrichment this month is a jewelry class- it was a DREAM last Wednesday and I'm greatly looking forward to it again tomorrow.

I planned it to be more like a studio setting than step by step instruction (that doesn't mean that they get less instruction- just that it is entirely their choice what they work on). I let the students pick from about 12 materials they could work with. They all got 3 choices and I spent a majority of my weekend putting together little kits for them with each set of materials ;).

For our first class we talked about making our own beads and we worked with Polymer clay (popular brands are FIMO and Sculpey). I use this at home with my own children ALL of the time, we love it!! It's nice and firm, easy to add details and cooks in the oven on a low temp resulting in a hard, durable, wearable bead or item.

After my demo on how to create beads with layered colors inside the bead I encouraged them to make whatever they wanted, keeping in mind that they will eventually be strung......I could tell by their reaction at the end of class that they liked this stuff as much as my own kids do ;).