Fly-By-Night: Mary & the Witch's Flower Earrings

After watching Mary and the Witch's Flower by Studio Ponoc, I made a pair of Fly-By-Night earrings for a friend as a Christmas gift. I had been planning on making a pair for myself, so that is what today's tutorial is about. These earrings will also have the added cool of glowing in the dark. Plus, even if no one else recognizes these from that movie when I wear them, they still look cute.

1. Clay in a light bright blue color.

2. Roller for clay

3. Clay knife

4. Clay stylus tool or other pointed tool

6. Chalk pastels in varying shades of blue (light to dark) and a medium colored purple

7. Brush to apply pastels

8. Eye pins

9. Round nosed pliers (optional; I use them to help me place eye pins)

10. Wine corks with toothpicks stuck in them (I use these to place the clay on while I color it so I don't mess it up with my hands)

11. Glow-in-the-Dark paint (I use Deco Art )

12. Brush for glow-in-the-dark paint

13. Black Thread

14. Glue (I use Aleene's Tacky Glue)

15. Acrylic paint in a blue-purple color (I am using Blueberry Frost by Apple Barrel, NOT the Blue Bonnet color shown here)

16. Varnish (optional for polymer clay)

17. Earring hooks

Simple enough: roll out two balls from the clay in the *same* size.

*Or as close as you can :)

Set these aside.

The leafy piece on the bottom of a flower where the stem is is called the calyx.
Roll out your clay thinly. Cut out a six point star shape to cover the bottom of the flower. I use the stylus to draw them before I cut them out.

With the rest of the blue clay, roll the clay out thin.

With the stylus tool, trace two little star shapes on the clay. These star shapes should have rounded edges instead of traditional pointy edges. They should be small enough to sit on the little balls and look like bloom ends (like a blueberry. These really look like glowing blueberries.)
Cut these stars out carefully with the knife. You will probably have to smooth them out a bit and redefine the shape after you cut them out, but that is fine.

Place the star shapes on top of the blooms on the opposite end of the calyx. Press the stylus tool into the center of the star shapes, affixing them to the round clay.

Put an eyepin through the bottom of the bloom, through the calyx. I use my pliers to make sure I get the pin where I want it.

If you have eye pins you bought from the store, you may have to trim them to the right size. You want the pin to not go any farther than halfway through the flower. Also, remember to bend a zigzag shape into the bottom of the pin. This will prevent the eye pin from falling or being pulled out.

If you want to know specifically how I do this, or you want to learn about making your own eye pins, this tutorial will help you:

Jewelry Basics: DIY Eye Pins for Clay Charms

Now you have two little fly-by-night blooms.

Grab the toothpick/cork tools and place the blooms on the toothpicks. Put the toothpick in the hole in the center of the stars. Don't shove them on to the toothpicks, just enough that they will stay put and not fall off while you are coloring them.

Now it is time to color the flowers.

Since I know it is hard to see what colors I am putting where in the photos, I have made a chart to try to explain what colors I have and where they go. Of course, how you want to color it is open to interpretation because I am just trying to imitate what was in the movie. If you see it differently, color it differently.

*Don't color the calyx and rounded star portion. If you get color on them, no harm done, but we are going to be painting them later.
The fly-by-nights in the movie seem to glow from inside, but they have deep purple centers. So I am going to start with purple.
You can either use your brush directly on the pastel sticks or scrape some pastel off the block onto a surface and pick it up from there.
I get just a tiny bit of pastel on my brush and color lightly. You can always add color, but you can't take it off! I focus the purple on the middle portion of the flowers, all the way around.

Next I use the turquoise blue. I focus the color on the top and bottom parts of the flower, then I put a coat over the middle portion as well. Blend your colors into each other well so they look natural, not blocky.

Last is the dark blue. I put a very light coat of this color all over just to add some depth to the flower.

Bake your clay (polymer clay) or let it dry (air dry clay). Follow your clay's instructions.

Now we will paint the bloom end of the flowers and the calyx with our blue-purple paint.

Make the edge inside the little rounded stars it smooth, but don't worry too much about it, it won't show a lot.

*I know that my paint in the supplies photo is not this paint I show here. I mixed up my paints and had to grab the color that I actually wanted!

We will do one coat of varnish before we do the glow paint. I use Duraclear Gloss Polyurethane. It is a brush-on varnish.

Just do one quick coat. Don't mess your brush around a whole lot; you'll mess up the pastel.

Get your black thread.

Cut off a small amount, only about an inch. I decided my thread was thicker than I wanted, so I split the thread in half by untwisting and pulling it apart.

I dipped the end into my glue. Then I stuck the end of it into the hole at the top of the flower (you may need a pin or toothpick to help you). Then I let that dry.

Trim the end of the thread off a bit past the end.

Open the french hook by twisting the loop side ways, not pulling it open. Just twist one side away from the other side.

Put the flower on and close the loop.

Now we will use the glow paint. Just do one thin coat and let it dry. You will have to do more than one to get a glow that is worth anything.

How many coats you use is up to you. What I do when I use glow paint is I paint the clay, wait till it dries, charge the paint with a light, and then turn off the lights to see how bright it is. When it is as bright as I want I decide that it is done.

For the glowing bit on the end of the stamen, dip the end of the thread into the glow paint. Let that dry, and then dip it again. Continue doing this step until the end is kinda like a little ball of glow paint.

Now all that is left to do is coat it with varnish. Since our varnish is clear it won't affect the glow paint that much at all.

I normally do 3 coats on my charms. However many you do is up to you. Just make sure your coats are pretty thin and let them dry in between.

Congratulations! You have found the fly-by-night flower!

Or, should I say, you have made the fly-by-night flower!

These are cute earrings even if you have never watched the movie. Some people are probably going to mistake them for blueberries, but they will still think they are pretty.