Mixed Media: How to Make Polymer Clay Beads is part of Interweave's Beading Daily Workshop.
You can find it at the Interweave Store.
There are a lot of polymer clay books out for people who want to learn to make polymer clay beads. But a lot of people are more visual learners and do better with a teacher.
This video is a great introduction to working with polymer clay and making beads for those people.
The teacher, Ronna Sarvas Weltman, takes you through the basics of polymer clay bead making step by step.
She starts with explaining what polymer clay is, and then goes right into the lessons. Starting with the very basics, she tells you how to condition clay, and how to tell when it's been properly conditioned. She shows you the tools you will be using, how to add texture, and how to make your own texture plates.
Then she starts showing you how to make beads. She starts naturally enough with a perfectly round bead. She shows you how to roll it, how to pierce it to make it into a bead, and how to suspend it for curing. Then she explains two ways of making matched sets of beads so they are uniformly sized.
Then she shows you two more kinds of beads. A wonderful bowl shaped bead that would work very well for bead caps on bigger focals, and flat disk beads.
Then she goes into color, how to paint textured beads to bring out more of the texture, how to create marbled effects, and how to create and apply canes.
Her personal aesthetic runs towards big,chunky, "modern primitive" type looks that are colorful and bold so her examples tend to be very bold, the techniques are universal though and will work if what you have in mind is something more delicate and fine.
I would recommend watching the video all the way through before starting any of the projects. I would also recommend having polymer clay on hand before you watch the video because as soon as it's over, you'll want to try some of the techniques. Because it's a DVD, you'll be able to go back over parts you want more clarification on while you're working.
Ronna is clearly very enthused about her subject matter, and the video is brightly lit and well filmed so you can see what's she doing. Plus she does explain it as she's working.
So if you have wanted to try polymer clay for a while, this video is an excellent starting place.


Interweave provided this review copy of Mixed Media: How to Make Polymer Clay Beads to me free of charge.
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