All About

Hello and welcome to The Clay Bead, I’m Jennifer Ponzo and the Artist behind the clay beads and unique jewellery you find here on our website.  I’m passionate about creating beautiful beads and exquisite jewellery and I’m delighted to share it with you today.

The handcrafted jewellery and beads you find on our website are made in Perth, Western Australia.  I started out making my own jewellery from store bought beads several years ago but wanted something different, something no one else had.  That’s when I decided to start making my own beads – and now I’m hooked!

I truly love creating each of the beads by hand. I start by selecting all of the colours I want to use in the beads; these come from my extensive supply of coloured polymer clays, and then choose the pattern I want to create – this is the tricky part!  Once the pattern is made in the right colours of clay, I apply it to plain white beads (this is in the majority of cases, some beads have the same colour throughout).  When I’m happy with the beads and smooth out any bumps it’s off to the oven.

After the beads are baked they are extremely durable (validated by the fact that often when I’m sanding my beads they go flying off in all directions and I’ve never broken one!) and are ready for sanding.  Many of our beads are sanded, then buffed, and sometimes a gloss is applied as well depending on the look I’m trying to achieve with each style of bead.

Now they’re ready to be sent out to you, or turned into some amazing polymer clay jewellery!