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DIY Clay Pins: Best Supplies and Materials

DIY Clay Pins: My Favorite Supplies and Materials

Hi friends,

Last week I started working on a small collection of Lotl clay pins, and this week they’re going live in December’s shop update. I’m so excited!

A lot of you have been asking on Instagram about what materials I use to make clay pins at home, so I thought I’d go through my list here. Below you’ll find a list of the supplies I use to make clay pins for my own business. I use affiliate links, which means that if you purchase something using my links, I get a commission from the seller. This makes it possible for me to create more helpful articles, which I hope you enjoy ^^

A grid of kawaii clay pins featuring The Lotls by Evy Benita

I hope my list helps you on your creative journey!

Fimo Soft from Staedler: My favorite for DIY clay pins

Fimo Soft clay is, well, soft. This makes it absolutely ideal for making things with simple shapes, such as clay pins. My personal favorite pack to get is the big 454g pack of beige clay.

The colors don’t seem to make a difference on the clay itself. I just like working with beige because I tend to use light pastel colors in my work, and beige gives me a light and warm-tinted base to work from. If you’re not sure which color you’d like to start with, or if you want to try a mix of things, I recommend this colorful clay starter pack (same brand).

Soft clay is easier to handle and cut, but its downside is that it doesn’t hold detail very well. If you’re looking for a clay that holds fine detail, I recommend Super Sculpey clay instead. This is the clay I use for my more detailed sculptures. It takes a long time to knead, so I don’t tend to use it unless lots of detail is needed.

 

 

Making clay pins using Fimo Soft from Staedler - Clay pins and material recommendations by Evy Benita

Satin Glaze from Sculpey

The satin glaze from Sculpey is my favorite to use for polymer clay! The glaze gives your pieces a semi-glossy surface which still photographs nicely under artificial lighting (in moderation, it’s still shiny). It hardens with a light shine and no stickiness. I’ve used glazes and varnishes in the past which have stayed tacky and sticky after drying, but Sculpey’s satin varnish is not sticky at all when set. So that’s a massive plus!

This sweet satin glaze works well on top of acrylics, and as long as you’ve let them dry, the glaze won’t smear them at all. – Obviously I haven’t tried every acrylic paint brand in the world, but it worked great with the acrylics I used for my pins. I haven’t tried this myself, but I imagine the glaze would work nicely as a way of sealing your acrylic paintings too. Let me know if you try it out!

 

Acrylic Paints: Pebeo vs Daler Rowney

Daler Rowney is generally my favorite brand of acrylics to use. It’s relatively affordable, and it’s a strong alternative to more expensive paints.

However, my local art shop did not have Daley Rowney paint in stock, so I decided to test out one of their other brands: Pebeo. These paints were in the same price range, so I thought I’d give them a go.

 

 

I used my new acrylic Pebeo paints on my Lotl clay pins, and truth be told: they were lovely to work with. They’re slightly thinner than my preference, so if I encountered Daler Rowney and Pebeo on the same shelf, at the same price, I’d probably go with Daler. But the Pebeo paints were so darn close in quality that I would have no issue working with these paints for the rest of my career as a clay artist.

Although the Pebeo’s paints were thinner than Daler Rowney’s, I found the Pebeo pigments a bit nicer. They were a bit easier to blend into light pastel colors, but again, not by much.

Long story short: my top pick is Daler Rowney acrylics, but I would happily continue working with Pebeo paints too.

DIY clay pins from Evy Benita. The photo shows 20+ homemade clay pins of The Lotls

Arteza Acrylic Markers

I use Arteza’s acrylic markers to add smaller details to my clay pins. In my Lotl pins, for example, I used them to draw the eyes and cheeks:

I used the thicker set of acrylic markers for the cheeks, and the thin tip set for the eyes and FrankenLotl’s stitches. The thinnest set is probably my favorite to work with, but that’s mostly because I needed thin tips for this particular project.

Like with any new medium, it might take a while to get used to the markers. I recommend practicing on a piece of paper before drawing directly onto your clay pieces, just to make sure you don’t get any unwelcome surprises.

 

 

 

 

DIY clay pins from Evy Benita. Their big blobby eyes are drawn using Arteza acrylic markers.

 

Online Courses for Polymer Clay Beginners

Not sure where to start with polymer clay? Here are some courses I found useful when first starting out:

I hope you found this article helpful! Let me know in the comments if there’s another topic you’d like me to cover. I’d love to hear from you <3

Big hugs, – Evy

DIY Clay Pins: Best Supplies and Materials

Hi! My name is Evy Benita, and I’m an illustrator and enamel pin maker. I started my enamel pin adventure back in 2018, and since then, I have put over 500 pin designs through production

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