I love the idea of candy necklaces, they would never last very long when I wore them as a child, the candy would soon be eaten and I would be left with an empty piece of elastic around my neck, awww I was a sugar addict at a very early age…

While brainstorming for a Valentines Day project, I had the idea to make some conversation hearts out of polymer clay, whenever I get a new idea, I always search google images and Pinterest to see if anyone else has come up with the same or similar idea as mine. I found al lot of finished jewelry on Etsy made either from real conversation hearts or possibly clay and I did find one other tutorial on making hearts that is really cute but a bit different from how I went about it, here is the link to Adrianne’s blog and her super cute conversation heart charm bracelet , fun tutorial from Happy Hour Projects
I have had very limited experience with clay and I learned a lot from creating this project i will go into some of the mishaps so that you can avoid them.

Here is the video tutorial,

Here are some additional tips I discovered in the making process,

-Make sure the temperature is at the right setting, I baked mine at 325 for 20 minutes and I burnt them. I was told that 300 or lower is best for polymer clay.
If you do over bake your clay, you can sometimes erase the burn marks with sandpaper, much like scrapping burnt toast. I was able to salvage a few of mine but some were just a lost cause.
– The stamps I found were in the clay section at Michael’s, they were 7$ and I used my 40% off coupon. You can find stamps in the jewelry section as well, these are often very small, so small that I wasn’t sure If I would be able to get ink into them. There were also rubber stamps in the stamp section itself, but I was concerned that they did not have a sharp enough edge to go into the clay. I would love to know if any of you try using other types of stamps and how they work… or not. So if anybody tries an alternate approach, please let me know how it goes!
-the lettering is tricky, I tried a tiny paint brush and red paint but this was really difficult, I made a mess of the hearts that I did not burn and at this point I was in a huff and ready to dramatically toss all of my hard work into the trash. I had enough sense to take myself calmly back to Michaels to try a micron pen before giving up.
The pen did work but I did have a few mess ups with the pen too, thankfully I was able to wipe the unwanted ink off with water and a q-tip just as Adrianne at the Happy Hour blog suggested! Michael’s only had a #5 micron pen in red, I would have liked to try the finer tip #2 as this may has been the most ideal. I have also seen these pens at Aaron Brothers and art supply stores.

Over all I was really happy that I didn’t toss this project, I think they turned out really cute in the end!

Leave me a comment, let me know what you would stamp on a conversation heart, and if you make some please post a photo to my Facebook page!

Happy Love Day!
Debi