This is Not a Tute

I'm a complete novice with polymer clay, I couldn't begin to teach anyone anything. But while puttering with some clay the other day, having no idea where I was going with it, I puttered myself right into a rather simple way to make swirly/spiraly patterns. This is how I arrived at the pieces I used to cover my Starry Night bottle so I figured what the heck, I'll share how I got there.

I started with this, a brain of pre-conditioned, pre-mixed clay I had been gifted with.

I pinched off pieces of it, smooshed them up a bit to further mix & mute the colors, then rolled the pieces into little snakes.

Then, holding the snake in one hand, I used the thumb and forefinger of the other to gently twist down its length. The closer and harder you twist, the tighter the spirals will be. And the easier they are to break! I broke a ton of them while twisting. I was aiming for a random pattern so wasn't worried about being consistent here.


With some "twisty snakes" made up, I went in two different directions with them.

1) I lined up a number of them to form a rectangle, then fed it through my pasta machine 'til I had a sheet in the thickness I wanted.


2) I coiled twisted snakes into lollipops, then used a brayer to flatten them, resulting in nicely defined spiral patterns.

Also, if you know the "back" side of your spirals aren't going to be visible in your project, you can stick your coils onto a flat piece of scrap clay and feed it through your pasta machine (or hand roll it), then when you've reached the desired thickness & pattern, cut out the areas you want to use. This way was more manageable, but I couldn't apply it to my bottle since the scrap backing side was gong to be visible.

So, that's how I made my bottle. And remember, this was not a tute. :)