Meet my creation — a wall-sized charm bracelet. I was inspired by those tacky plastic chains where 80s kids proudly displayed the things they love (in my case: music! space! Froot Loops!). Before this I’d only briefly flirted with clay, so I decided to embrace mediocrity and go big…6 feet to be exact. I also knew there needed to be lots of hearts. I wanted it to feel like something Barbie would hang on her wall.
The charm chains are an homage to that iconic 90s fashion statement achieved by stealing the plug chain from your parent’s bathtub. I recruited a friend to make the pom poms, and the dice were a toy that my cat did not care for. I also threw a y2k flip phone in there, because I can do what I want.
The process:
- Made everything with polymer clay baked in my toaster oven (shout out to YouTube)
- Spray painted the bracelet links on my deck
- Hung with command strips and a prayer
Skills I learned:
- How to condition, sculpt and bake polymer clay (pro tip — use a pasta machine)
- How to make clay patterns (this is very fun)
- How to spray paint an ombre look to give that plasticky sheen
- How to make pom poms (actually my friend made them but I watched)
- Where the buttons go on a flip phone
- What the tail end of Elvis’s Cadillac looked like
- Creative storage solutions (shout out to my oven)
Mistakes I made:
- Burnt the clay…many times… a terrible smell
- Started with an entire chain of hearts, but they didn’t lay flat
- The first letter D I made looked like an avocado and I couldn’t unsee it
- I tried making my own clay beads to hang the charms but they added a lot of clutter.
- Made charms that were too small or didn’t hang well
- Structural problems with the chain links
- The first cereal bowl cracked open, so I used tinfoil to prop up the second one
- Used shitty command hooks that rip off the drywall when you try to move them
- Too much glitter*
*jk there’s never too much glitter
UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL
Froot Loops TUTORIAL (*not an officially licensed product)
Oopsies
Leave a Reply