Shelanu were thrilled to have Katy from Fison Zair come to the Craftspace office to lead a masterclass in polymer clay jewellery making. Craftspace and participants from Women’s Maker Movement were also excited to get involved in the day workshop.

Fison Zair creates contemporary jewellery and homewares with beautiful colours and patterns. You can find her work here: fisonzair.co.uk

The workshop started with choosing a colour palette and then mixing different pieces of Fimo together to create a new colour that matched the colour card.

We rolled lengths of Fimo, wrapping them in thinner sheets of Fimo and grouping them together to create ‘sticks of rock’. This then led to creating the different patterns on the rolls of Fimo. It was exciting to see how everyone’s unique colour schemes and rolling techniques changed the outcome of the patterns.

We used metal bradawl? tools and wooden skewers to create holes and turn the rolls into tubes. We then shaped the tubes before baking in the oven for 30 minutes.

Katy had a range of colourful suede cord which we used to thread through our baked tubes and beads. We learnt a new way of tying the cord to create an adjustable knot that looked neat and functioned well.

At the end of the session we posed for a photo wearing our finished necklaces with pride! The group learnt some new practical ideas that they could use in the workshops and all finished the day feeling inspired.