Flowers are a fun accessory to make from polymer clay, especially if you’re just starting out! I know before I made my own style of dragon, I made sunflowers and white daisies just to practice getting a feel for polymer clay. Today, I have a simple polymer clay gerber daisy tutorial for you. You can make them in pretty much any color you’d like! For my project, I chose colors based off of reference photos of gerber daisies that would contrast and still coordinate with the galaxy dragon they accompanied.

Supplies:

• Polymer clay in colors of your choosing for the petals (I’m using a pink and a yellow)
• Roller (optional)
• Circular cutters (optional)
• A dark color of polymer clay for the center of your flowers (I used black, dark brown would work great too)
• Exacto knife (not shown)
• A needle tool
• A small ballpoint tool

Step 1: Prep your petals

Gerber daisies consist of lots of petals. To get us ready to make all of those, we’re going to start picking off similar sized pieces of clay and rolling them up into balls. Go crazy in this step. If you look at reference photos, you’ll see that even a single gerber daisy has many petals.

Tip: If you’re like me, you have a hard time gathering pieces of clay that are close to the same size. To help on this front, we’re going to flatten our petal color and cut circles from it, rolling those pieces up into balls. As long as your clay is evenly flat, these balls will be identical in size, which will go a long way to help your petals look even.

Step 2: Make your petals

Once you have your colors rolled up into pieces, you’ll want to take a ball and roll it into a snake that’s about as long as you want your petals. Repeat this with all of the clay balls.

Flatten this snake so it becomes a skinny and pointed oval. This is the base petal shape for our gerber daisy.

It is still possible to have uneven petals at this point depending on how much you squish them, so pay close attention to how much pressure you’re using with each snake. This will help the resulting petals look similar to each other.

Repeat this with all of your snakes.

Step 3: Build the base layer

Now you’ll want to gather your petals and cluster them in a circle. Depending on the width of your petals, you’ll be able to fit more or less. These gerber daisies have thinner petals and typically have quite a few clustered around the center, so that’s what we’re going for here.

You may need to reshape your petals as you work. While we’ll be adding a center to this layer, you may also want to slightly blend the petals together at the center so they are sticking to each other. This can be done with a needle tool or something long and thin to blend into the crevices between the petals.

Tip: Use TLS or another kind of liquid clay to help glue the petals together. This will give them a stronger bond after it’s baked.

Afterwards, you’ll want to add a second another layer to help fill in the gaps. This will make your gerber daisy look fuller.

Step 4: Add the center

The reference photos I used showed dark centers for the gerber daisies, so I went ahead and used a black clay. I first created a dip in the center of the flower. You’ll need a piece big enough to place in the middle of the flower and use it to connect all the petals. Roll that piece into a ball and slightly flatten it with one of your fingers so you get a circle.

Step 5: Add the small petals

If you look at gerber daisies, just around the center there are small, fluffy petals. This is a transition point between the outside petals and the center. To achieve this look, I created a small snake of the petal color and laid it around the center of the flower.

I then used my needle tool to texture it, blending it into the center and the outer petals.

If you want to create some extra depth with your flower, you can use your ball tool to lightly add lines along the length of the petals. I used a slender tipped tool to add a dent in the center of each petal.

Step 6: Finishing touches

Now that you’re happy with your flower, it’s time to bake! Make sure you follow the package instructions for the temperature and time. Once your flower is cooled, add glaze. This isn’t a necessary step since we didn’t use any powders or anything that could be rubbed off the clay, but I like adding it to make the flower look more finished.

Here’s the project that inspired this tutorial. It was a fun custom galaxy dragon with gerber daisies!