Clay Best Friend Necklace and Galentine’s Cards!

Are you watching Parks & Recreation? Because you should be. It’s the best show on television, easily. Not only is it hilarious, but all the characters actually like and support each other. It’s the kind of people you want to know, and the kind of town you want to live in, mostly. I could do without the raccoon infestation.

On that show Leslie Knope starts a new holiday for the day before Valentine’s Day which she calls Galentine’s Day. It’s a chance for her to get together with all her lady friends and celebrate their friendships, and I think that is so beyond super brilliant. My lady friendships are something I appreciate more and more with each passing year, and I think we absolutely do deserve a holiday. So I made some cards I’ll be passing out to my friends, and which you are welcome to use as well.

I made six different versions, just click and save, and spread the lady love.

But since some friendships deserve more than just cards, I couldn’t stop there. I wanted to make a modern grown up version of the little gold necklaces that best friends would give each other when I was a teenager (I hear. I don’t have any personal experience with that. Cue the sad trombones of Tresa’s depressing childhood). Wearing one half of those “Best Friend” necklaces just looked so special to me, and now that I’m a grown up I can make up for lost time.

Take some well-conditioned polymer clay and roll it out to about 1/4″ thick. Well-conditioned just means that it’s nice and smooth and pliable, and not a dried out crumbly piece of garbage. You just have to squish it and squish it and squish it for a while to make that happen, but if you have a particularly bad case you can mix in a bit of petroleum jelly. Once it’s rolled out, use a cookie cutter to cut a heart shape, just as if you were making sugar cookies. Once you use it on the clay, however, you won’t want to use it on cookies again, so the dollar store is a great place to look for one.

Cut a jagged line down the center of your heart and smooth out any rough edges.

Poke a hole in the top of each piece so it can be worn as a necklace. A pencil works great for this job.

I used letter stamps to put “Be Fri” on one piece and “St Ends” on the other, but you could also do that by hand with a dull pencil. Smooth out any stray marks.

This step is optional, but I wanted to add a little glitter. So I used this stuff called Luster Dust and brushed it onto the clay like I was applying blush to my face. I love the cool opalescent shimmer this stuff adds. Bake the clay pieces according to the instructions on the package.

Once the clay is baked and cooled, you can add some paint to the debossed letters to make them stand out. I rubbed a bit of acrylic paint over the letters, and then came back with a washcloth or a baby wipe to remove the excess paint. Use a light touch over the top of the letters so you don’t just wipe all the paint away.

With the paint dry you can add a ribbon and your necklace is ready to give away.

I don’t really have one specific person I would describe as my Best Friend, so I made a few sets of these to pass out among a treasured group of friends. I feel a lot more lucky that way. I wish I could go back and tell my 7th grade self that there would come a time when I had such an embarrassment of riches in the friend department.

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