Tutorials for Making Molds and Textures for Metal Clay

On this page you’ll find information about making your own molds and textures to use with metal clay. External links open in a new window. All PDF’s require Adobe reader. Content checked July 2021.

You could also check out our unique texture supplier page for sources of images to make into your own textures.

AMCAW Tutorial Collections

The Alliance for Metal Clay Arts Worldwide (AMCAW) have lots of information for all skill levels in their learning center. Members also have access to tutorials and presentations by top metal clay artists from all over the world. Membership costs $60 for a year.

Craftcast Metal Clay Video Classes

Craftcast has a huge range of tutorials from international metal clay masters at all skill levels. They cover many techniques and combinations of stones, glass, color techniques, mixed media – you name it, Craftcast has it!

Anniemation

Great source of texture inspiration. This site allows you to save images of texture from nature, fabrics, animals, vehicles and much more.

Carving Tutorial

Useful lesson plan layout for teaching carving. This is easily applied to carving textures for using with metal clay.

Creating stamps with Stampmaker Essential from Photocentric

Very useful resource for creating your own stamps to use with metal clay. Even if you don’t use the Photocentric Stampmaker equipment, you’ll learn some useful tips on how to create the black and white transparencies to use with photopolymer plates.

Electrolytic Etching of Brass

This is a technique for easily impressing images into brass plate. Learn more about the process of electro-chemically etching the brass.

Etching and Copper Plating

How copper plate and etch Altoid tins with a salt water solution. Use magazine pages as cheap toner transfer media. There is another article which takes this further here.

How to make photo polymer plates

Fantastic tutorial by Maggie Bergman. Includes everything you need to know to make photo polymer plates (PPP). Photo polymer plates allow you to turn black and white designs, including photographs, into stamps to use with your metal clay. This allows you to design not just your piece of jewellery but also the texture you use. You finished item will be totally unique.

How to produce Photo Polymer Plates

Photo polymer plates allow you to turn black and white designs, including photographs, into stamps to use with your metal clay. This allows you to design not just your piece of jewellery but also the texture you use. You finished item will be totally unique. Good guide from Art Clay World

Improving the life of photo polymer plates

Useful technical guide to making and storing photopolymer plates which last. It’s written for the print industry so you can ignore the parts that don’t relate to using PPP’s with metal clay. If you’re having trouble with your plates cracking or curling, this article should help you increase the life of your photopolymer plates.

Mad About Molds – How to use molds with clay

Very comprehensive page detailing how to use the molds with clay.

Make your own cookie cutters

This downloadable pdf tutorial is very cheap and well worth it if you have ideas for making your own cookie cutters.

Make your own custom punches – Wanaree Tanner

Great tutorial from Wanaree showing how to customise brass tubing to make your own shaped punches. These are great for creating tiny embellishments to stick onto the surface of your work.

Margaret Schindel – Textures in Metal Clay

Another very comprehensive HubPages article, this time about the different ways you can texture metal clay.

Metal Clay Connections – Textures and Patina

January 2007 newsletter focusing on texture and patina. Highlights include comprehensive and informative articles about textures by Alice Alper-Rein, Sherry Fotopoulos and Amy Ikenn and on patina by Sherry Viktora.

 

Photoshop Tutorial – turning a photo into artwork for photo polymer plates.

Maggie Bergman’s excellent tutorial shows you how to prepare a photo for use with photo polymer plates. A very useful companion to the above tutorial.

Polymer Clay Textures – Helen Breil

Download these fantastic tutorials for a small fee. This website has lots of great information about making your own textures in a number of ways. She has a wonderful tutorial about how to make radiating lines textures which includes a project to make a round focal bead dressed up with mica powders.

Silhouette School Tutorials

This blog site has a huge amount of information about using the Silhouette cutting machine, the software that feeds it and much more. Although not designed to give information specifically for people working with metal clay and the Silhouette, much of the information is useful to metal clay artists and easily adaptable for the media.

Wordmark

This useful site allows you to see any word in a wide variety of fonts. Great for choosing fonts for unique texture making.