Happy Anniversary Silver Clay

We want to wish Silver Clay a happy 2nd anniversary! We met Marcia, owner of Silver Clay, at our local Polymer Clay group. With Lianne also being a graphic designer by day, Marcia was looking for someone to help her with creating a logo and identity for her new store/studio. The store is full of fun, funky affordable gifts and jewelry. She also offers a variety of Silver clay, Polymer Clay and jewelry classes. If you ever visit Wakefield, Ma., be sure to stop by (located 391 Main Street) and say hi from Swirly Designs. It so nice to support local business.

Baby Ornament Shadow Box

Even though we call our designs ornaments, there are so many other possibilities you can do with our ornaments to enjoy them all year round. In the coming months we will show you fun and easy ways you can decorate and display your Swirly Designs ornaments.

We have recently been creating shadow boxes with our ornaments. The one pictured was created for a school charity auction.
But with these simple steps and materials you can create your own shadow box.

You can pick up a shadow box frame at your local craft store or frame shop. We like to use the natural unfinished wood because we can paint it ourselves.
Other materials you'll need are glue, fabric tac, glitter, stickers, ribbon, rhinestones....really, you can use whatever your want that will coordinate and compliment the ornament colors.

We start by removing the glass and sanding the frame a little,
so the paint adheres. Then, we look at the ornament and choose colors that will compliment.

While the frame is drying, we use a good adhesive and glue the ornament to the frame insert. If you choose you can also paste a decorative piece of paper to the insert first. You can use a solid paper or a print. Nowadays there is such a wonderful array of scrapbook papers to choose from, just remember not to use a paper that is too busy.


We are always picking up fun embellishments and ribbons from the craft store and little shops around town. We collect all that stuff because we never know when we'll will use them. The green felt on the edges is actually felt we found at Paper Source over the holiday.

After we glued the ornament in the frame we added fun
little stickers and glitter to the frame's mat to give it that
sparkle when light hits it.

Here is the final piece!
A wonderful gift for a baby shower or to hang in a nursery.

We'd love to know how you've displayed your Swirly Designs!

The Making of our Springtime collection

Even though Easter has come and gone,
we thought we would like to start the new blog
explaining a little of how these ornaments are created.


We start each design with a sketch. From
there we create each ornament using a mixture
of different white polymer clays.

This one is going to be a St.Patrick's bunny since
Easter was so early this year.

After baking, the next step after sanding the
ornaments is the painting stage.



The painted ornaments are done, waiting to be varnished with a high gloss.


then we add embellishments to our designs– like glitter,
danglers, ribbons etc.

glitter adds a fun sparkle to each ornament.


Here is what the final ornament looks like. This piece had
a paper ribbon embellishment.
If you want to more about our process click here.