The season of shadows:

I love polymer clay. I think it started from when I was a kid and my mom and I made dollhouse miniatures and we'd spend hours making little plates of food, plants, garden stuff. We'd be lost in creation for hours. We made bread clay with white glue and we'd use sawdust for the nuts on caramel apples.

Here's my first little online tutorial. I started making jack O lantern bracelets three years ago and these were such fun I wanted to share.

Start with orange soft polymer clay and form little balls, couldn't be easier. Kneading the dough first makes this much easier. Push an eye pin through the center of each of your little jack O lanterns and put them in the oven on warm for about 20 minutes. Take them out of the oven and let them dry.

You can paint faces on your little guys but you can also make faces with a black sharpie marker, they have all different sizes now and they are permanent. Draw your little face in black and then take a white paint pen and add your teeth, your eye balls, anything fun. Now use the sculpey glaze over each pumpkin and let them dry on glass. You can cut the eye pins smaller to add to a bracelet. Now if you love beads as much as I do you can add tons of beads. I posted a photo of an example above. Now...if you prefer flat pumpkins, just roll logs from those polymer clay strings and put the logs side by side and cut them into little 1 1/2 inch strands and pinch each end adding the top and a tiny little green leaf. Run the eye pin down the center being very careful not to puncture the clay so you can see it. The faces are a little tricker because of the bumbs but the pumpkins turn out so great. You can find photos of them at poetsummer.etsy.com or ebay at poetsummer. If you have any questions, drop me a note at Summerpoet@msn.com. Enjoy the season. I will miss summer this year but I am looking forward to the holiday season as well. Carrie.