Polymer clay rose is the most often taught flower on the internet. You can find countless videos, pictures, and articles about them. However, what seems missing to me is a good design. Today, I want to share with you a clever designed love letter necklace that makes your rose pop! If you are a beginner and have no idea how to make a polymer clay rose, don't worry, I cover that part too!

Materials used :

1. Four 3mm gold filled jump rings
2. Three 0.6mm gold plated eye pins
3. gold filled chain
4. Three 4mm round garnet beads
5. One 8mm cotton pearl
6. One gold filled clasp
7. 24 gauge gold filled soft wire
8. Fimo Soft clay:
   white(No.0), lemon(No.10),
   cherry red(No.26), emerald(No.56)
9. Sculpey Soufflé clay: cowboy(No.6053) 

Step 1. making 3D polymer clay envelope 

To make the envelope, I first created a template by paper (download the 3D envelope template here)and rolled my brown clay through a pasta machine at setting 3. Using a sharp craft knife, I traced the template to get my front and back sides of the envelope. To make the envelope more realistic, use a long blade to indent the front side to mimic the seams. Lightly squeeze the two sides together. Viola! The envelope is finished! At this point, you can attach the eye pins as shown in picture 5. Use force so they can be deeply embedded in the clay.

Step 2. creating polymer clay rose

Step 2.1 how to keep rose petal exactly the same size

Before we jumping into rose making, I like to share with you my trick of how to keep all my flower petal exactly the same size. You can use it for every kind of flower making, and I bet you will love it!

Traditionally, people love to roll the polymer clay into a tube and divide the petal using a thin blade. The drawback to this approach is you just can't keep all the petals the same unless you do it really careful and slow.

A quick and simple alternative is using a pasta machine and a cake piping nozzle! Roll the clay through a pasta machine and cut out small circles using a round piping nozzle.This way you control both the thickness and size of a petal. And it's super fast!

I use Wilton No.7 round piping nozzle (4mm in diameter). All my flowers, regardless of the variety, are based on those 4mm circles. For a fleshy succulent, maybe take two of those circles for one petal;  for a delicate rose like we are doing here, divide the circle in half and use a half circle as one petal.

Step 2.2 Making the roses

To fill in the heart shape, you will need to make 16-19 roses in total. Each rose should have 5 petals and each petal is 1/2 of "a circle".

Now it's finally the time to make the polymer clay rose. Flatten all the half circles to thin oval shapes (picture 6).  Roll one petal like a jelly roll to form the rose center, and attach it to a piece of wire using liquid clay. Bake the rose centers for 20 minutes so they won’t get squashed by the petals added later on. When the centers are ready, rub some liquid clay on all sides, then arrange the rose petals step by step as shown in picture 9 (please remember: baked clay will not adhere to the raw clay without some bonding material such as liquid clay or bake&bond). When all the petals are in place, cut out the wire and they are ready to use.

Step 3. Assemble the pendant

Attach the polymer clay roses to the envelope as shown in picture 11 and 12. Keep them tight so the underneath brown color won’t show through. You can choose to add calyx (each piece is 1/4 of a circle) to the roses as I did in picture 13 and 14. They are not essential unless you have certain spots you messed up and want to hide. Bake the finished love letter pendant at 110C (230F) for 30 minutes.

Step 4. Assemble the necklace

Multiple layered long necklaces are a huge trend right now. A large pendant provides a perfect opportunity for such design. I designed my first layer to be 16inch(40cm) with a simple golden color cotton pearl, the second 20inch(50cm) with beautiful red garnet beads and our cute polymer clay rose love letter. Picture 15-21 show you the steps of assembling the necklaces. If you are unfamiliar with how to decide the length of a necklace, here is a helpful guide.

So here you have it, a romantic love letter necklace! If you have any questions, please post in the comment area and I'll answer them as soon as possible. See you next time!

If you love polymer clay roses, we have another great in-depth tutorial for you! Check it out in our shop.