Yesterday Caspar and I worked together to make some personalised beads using FIMO. Totally inspired by Etsy artists.  We wanted to make some gifts so we personalised the beads with rubber stamps and made necklaces. I love FIMO because it comes in some many different colours which stay bright after baking. FIMO needs baking but it doesn't shrink at all, which is good to know.  I written about this before how using (pinching, rolling, shaping) FIMO is really good for building hand strength in preparation for writing. 

We rolled the FIMO into balls and pressed the sides flat. We used baking paper over the board so not to stain or get FIMO on the board but also so the sides would be really smooth. Caspar made a hole through each bead and with help used our rubber stamps to personalise the beads. For the most part we stamped in the names of people we made necklaces for. We also made a happy necklace, when I saw all of these colours 'happy' was the first word that came to mind. 

We used an embroidery needle to make the hole though the bead. Then we put them in the oven at 110 degrees (celsius) for thirty minutes.

Then we thread them onto leather or some twine. 

We packaged them and sent them to some of our dearest friends. I hope they like them!

We keep modelling beeswax and FIMO on Caspar's shelves so even though today we made a specific item he can use these materials when he likes in an open ended way. He doesn't always choose to bake what he makes with FIMO but when he does he is fully supervised.