In this tutorial I'll tell you how I make small beads with carved flowers and toning.

Main materials:

- polymer clay of bright colors

- pastel crayons of contrasting colours

- gel (liquid polymer clay)

Basic tools:

- sharp knife

- a onglette graver with a V-shaped blade for fine work

1. Production

Make a roll and mariking on it at 1 cm, then cut the pieces and make balls of them.

After the balls harden a little, make holes with needles in them and stuck beads into crumpled foil. It's time to bake!

2. Markup

After baking, take a pencil and find the center of the next flower on both sides of the beads – they will be bilateral.

3. Carving

I use sharp knives with a triangular shape of the blade.
The position of the hands:

Focusing on the marks, cut out the dots from both sides of the beads.

Then make petals twisting the bead with fingers. Slices do not have to be perfectly smooth – they are later sandpapered.

4. Toning

Crush pastel and rub it into the blanks with fingers. You need to properly colour every cut. At the end, wash your hands.

5. Smoothing

Put a bead on the needle or something else that will allow you not to touch it once again. Sandpaper it with a piece from Micro Mesh set, but you can use any sandpaper with fine grain.
My sponge had marking 1500. Then wash off the excess of pastel, perfect the surface and dry.

6. Securing with gel (baking)

Take a fresh gel (fluid, not thick) and coat the painted sections with your fingers. Pastel is smeared but not very much. So mind it.

After that, bake the beads again and cool them down. After that they become resistant to water, and paint is not scraped off accidentally.

7. Veins

Make veins slightly and carefullt cutting off paint with the onglette graver.

The work is finished, and the beads can be used for a jewelry!