Whip It Up Wednesday: Anthro Inspired Tea Rose Earrings

As you might be guessing, I'm on a bit of an Anthro kick ;) 

Did you see that my Anthro-inspired Big Top earrings got into the TSWL's Finest May 2011?! Exciting!! So, if you like them, please vote for me!

OK, so here's my next Anthro installment! 

The Inspiration:

Tiny Tea Rose Posts, $24.
Not really too expensive for Anthro, but fun to make!

The Knock-Off:

Not as delicate as Anthro's, but not too bad!
These also look much nicer irl; I needa work on my photography ;)

What You Need:

* Coloured polymer clay (in green, white, pink & yellow/gold)

* Earring post blanks

* Aerosol glaze/varnish

* Super glue

* A clay cutting blade

* An oven!

What To Do:

To make the right shade of pale yellow (or as close too as I could with my on-hand clay) take a large portion of white clay and a small portion of yellow. I only had gold, so my final shade isn't exactly what I'd like, but it's OK :)

Kneed the clay until it's malleable. Roll both colours out into a strip.

Twist the two strips together. Continue twisting and kneeding until the colours are completely blended. If it's too dark, add more white, and more gold if it's not dark enough.

Now take a hunk of white and one of pink and blend these together as above to get a nice pale shade of pink.

When you have your pale yellow strip and pale pink strip, roll them out to about the same thickness. This just makes it easier to judge the required size of the smaller portions we're about to cut off :)

[I also blended some leaf green and white to get a nice shade of green to go with this]

Cut off small portions of clay in the following (this is for a pair of earrings):

2 x larger pink balls

4 x larger green balls

4 x smaller yellow balls

6 x larger yellow balls

Flatten out both of the pink balls and roll them gently to form two flower centres, like this one:

I like to flatten things against my blade, just because it's a nice smooth surface.

Now take all of the yellow balls, small and large, and flatten them out into circles. Roll the edges slightly up, like so: 

For each earring, take one pink centre and push two small yellow pieces gently onto opposite sides of it, like so:

Now for each earring take three of the larger yellow pieces and push them gently around the centre piece. Roll the outside edges of the big petals back slightly, like so:

For each earring, take one of the green balls and flatten it but into an oval shape. Add this to your flower.

This is what it should look like from the side:

Use your blade to cut off the "stem" of the flower. Be careful not to smoosh the petals when you do this though. Now you should have something like these:

Pop some baking paper on a tray and bake your clay pieces according to the instructions on the clay packet.

If you want, when they're baked and cooled, spray them with some glaze - shiny!

Use super glue to attach an earring blank to the back of each piece and that's it!

Here's another of my awesome photo edits ;)

Oh, what a freckly face and scruffy hair I have!

I hope you enjoyed my latest Anthro knock-off! Stay tuned for more :D