Ivory

Not really sure what category to place this under.

Well I've gotten in my head that I want to make a pair of moccasins, cro-magnon style. I might even make a whole cro-magnon-era outfit, if I like the way the moccasins turn out.

Anyway, I decided that I wanted the entire thing to be 100% hand-made, and one thing that cro-magnon man really loved was ivory beads. Ivory is kinda illegal these days, so I decided to make hand-made beads from polymer clay, in kind of an ivory color.

These beads are supposed to look like NEW ivory, which is why I won't be staining them. It was estimated that with the tools they had available to them, it would have taken the cro-magnon people about an hour to carve out, round down, and pierce each bead. I made 11 beads in an hour, and I think that, now that I know how to do it, it should take me quite a bit less time to make the next batch. I'm not sure how many I want to make; I think I will just make as many as I can with the clay that I have left, which should be about 66 more beads, based on how much clay it took to make these 11. So, 77 faux-ivory beads for $4 worth of clay isn't too bad, imo.

I also got this neat baking tin that has little metal rods that lay across it, for baking your beads and not getting one side flattened from sitting on a tray.