Polymer clay – making lentil beads

A friend gave me an off cut of thick Perspex this week, so I thought I would have another crack at making lentil beads.

A lentil bead is a round flattened bead, with a slight convex surface (like a chocolate minstrel)

I saw a blog or pinterest page showing someone making them with a plastic CD cover a while back. As I had a CD case( but no Perspex) I had a go but after a few failures attempts,I managed to crack the cd and decided to leave it ’til I had a bit of Perspex.

So with my perspex in hand I checked out a great tutorial at
http://desiredcreations.com/howTo_CALentilSwirl.htm
and had a go.

Basically you take a ball of clay, and roll it between a piece of Perspex and the table in a clock wise circular movement.
The more turns you make the swirlier the pattern becomes. The harder you press the more flat it becomes.

The Perspex worked better than the cd case.

I still have a way to go to get them perfect, but they came out better than my earlier attempts.

first make a ball using at least two colours

bi -cone bead

an effective pattern is to use two colours

Cut each ball in half and join the two colours together

Roll the ball about 150 times

Lentil Bead

then make small rotations pressing harder on the perspex until the bead looks like this

a few of my beads ready to go in the oven

WHAT I LEARNED

1. Don’t press down too hard, until the bead pattern is almost how you want it, otherwise it becomes a lentil before you’re ready
2. Be patient. I was expecting the colours to swirl after 20 or so turns, but it took more like 150 !
3. If it goes wrong,try to keep the pattern on the top of the clay, make it back into a ball and have another go
4. If you turn the bead over then you must move the Perspex in an anti clockwise motion
5. You can use any odd bits of clay for the ball, as long as you cover it over with some nice coloured clay.
6. When you make big circle motions the bead becomes more pointy ( known as a bi- cone shape)
7. The smaller the circles the more flat and smooth it makes the bead

8. It is possible to make holes in the bead before baking, but it alters the edge shape

9. It is hard to know how the colours and patterns will turn out

10. it is addictive !

Once they are baked , I think it is going to be a challenge trying to drill them edge to edge… but will have a play and let you know !