Preheat oven to 275 °F. Test temperature with oven thermometer for perfectly cured clay. Condition all clay by kneading until it’s soft and smooth or running it through the Clay Conditioning Machine for several passes on the widest setting. Fold the clay in half after each pass and insert the fold side into the rollers first.

Combine 1/16 package of Cobalt Blue polymer clay with a little more than 1/8 package of White clay. Roll this mix out on the thickest setting of the pasta machine to about a strip to about ¾” wide. Use your blade to trim a straight line on one side of the long strip. Set the clay length aside.

Repeat Step one, this time using Fuchsia and White clay.

Place both the light Fuchsia and light Blue pieces of clay on a small piece of parchment paper, with the trimmed side of each strip of clay up against the other piece of clay. Press gently to adhere. Set this new strip of clay aside.

Roll out a strip of white clay on the pasta machine’s thickest setting. It should be same length of your fuchsia/blue clay length. With your blade, cut this into a long, thin triangle that is about ½” wide at the top and comes to a point at the bottom.

Drape the long triangle lightly and vertically down the center of the blue and fuchsia strip of clay. Do not press to attach. You are using the white clay as a template to cut out the same sized triangle from the blue and fuchsia clay below. The line where the two colors meet should be running right below the center of the white triangle.

After cutting, gently lift the white triangle up. Now pull the Blue-Fuchsia triangle up and discard this or save for another project. Set the white triangle in the cut opening. Press the blue and fuchsia seams to adhere to the white.

Trim the long strip of clay so that it’s about 1 ½” wide on either narrow end. Maintain the same amount of Blue and Fuchsia clay on either side of the white when you cut.

Now begin the process of making a Skinner blend of this strip of clay. Fold the clay in the center, so that the same three colors meet each other when they meet. Place the folded end flush to the right of the pasta machine rollers. Send the clay through at the machine’s thickest setting.

Fold the clay again vertically and sent it through again at the machine’s second thickest setting.

Continue folding and sending the clay through the pasta machine about 25 more times, reducing the thickness of the clay three more settings on the machine as you go. Keep the width of the clay from spreading across the rollers, using a ceramic magnet or your finger.

Stop when you have a nice, even blend of color. You should have a strip of clay that is about 7 or 8 inches long. You need about 4 inches of color.

Using your round cutter, being punching out circles of color from the four inches. Press firmly and twirl gently before lifting the cutter up, so that you get a clean cut. Keep the circles fairly close to each other because you are making a pair of earrings with a relatively tight pattern. When you are finished punching, cut the clay in half so that you have two sheets with the same color at the top and bottom. Set the clay aside.

Run some black clay through the pasta machine. End up with a sheet that is the same thickness and size, or slightly larger, as one of the halves of your punched clay.

Place one sheet of the punched clay on top of the black clay. Back the other side of the black clay with the other punched sheet, lining up the same colors on each side.

Cut out two approximately ¾” square pieces of clay. These are your earring bases. Set them aside.

Individually roll out a small logs of White clay about 2” long and 1/16” wide. Twist and pull until it’s about 1/16” wide. Set this aside

Repeat Step 16, this time using. Black clay.

Lay the Black and White logs side by side. Twist the two together to form a candy cane stripe pattern. Do this by twisting the clays in one direction with the fingers of your right hand while you twist the clay in another direction with your left hand. Roll and reduce twist cane out until it’s about 1/6’ wide or a pleasing size for trimming your earrings.

Frame each earring by draping the frame around the outside of the earring and then cutting to fit. Butt the ends at the top of your earring, where you plan to insert the headpin. You can make a pair of identical earrings or you can have one Blue-topped earring and one Fuchsia-topped earrings. It’s your choice.

Make holes with your needle tool where you butted your frame ends on each earring. The hole should be large enough to accommodate a 1/8” to ¼” long eyepin and a bit of liquid clay. Bake the earrings in a preheated oven for about 20 minutes at 275 °F.

Using your round nose pliers, chair nose pliers and jewelry cutter, create two eyepins about 1/8” to ¼” in length.

After the earrings have come out of the oven again and cooled, attach each to the earring findings with your chainnose pliers.

Fun Wire and TLS don’t have to be used for the adding a headpin. You can also use pre- or handmade wire headpins which have been cut to size. They can be glued into the cooled, cured earrings using a cyanoacylate glue.