Mechanical Heart

Small box made with polymer clay, with rudimentary mechanism.

You can fill it with love words and offer to someone special!

Materials used in this project:

- Polymer clay

- 2 cookie cutters with 2 different sizes

- fimo liquid

- Epoxy glue

- embossing powder

- head pin

- Ribbon end crimp

- key charm

- paper

- Dimensional paint

- varnish (optional)

Making polymer clay gears with different sizes and shapes

Using a cookie cutter, cut 2 polymer clay hearts

Use the smaller cookie cutter as a mold and cover it with polymer clay.

Leave a small space open

Make a hole on each heart, in the same position

Make a small cylinder. It must be smaller then the height of the heart box.

Insert the head pin

Make a small cutt and insert a piece of paper

Make a small handle for the top

Bake all the pieces in the oven, during 30 minutes at 110°C/230°F

Unmount all the pieces of the head pin and remove the mold of the heart

Is time to start the box construction!

Use one heart as the base

The pieces of the head pin will be our mechanism . Insert the pin on the base.

Inside of the box let's place the cylinder and glue it at the pin

Replace the small piece of paper by a long strip. Glue it at the cylinder and make sure thet it will stay in place before you close the box with the second heart.

Let it dry

I used epoxy glue for all the parts.

Creating the metalic effect on the gears with embossing powder.

I've used fimo liquid as fixative for the embossing powder

Use the heat gun to melt the embossing powder and use something to flat it before it cools down. I used an acrylic block, but you can use a metalic piece too

Time to decorate the box with the gears, using epoxy glue.

The last gear should be placed in the head pin and glued to it

Give an appropriate and functional shape to your handle using the pliers

Before winding the paper strip, make sure that you can pull it of!!

For that I used a ribbon end crimp, with a small key charm

I added a few more decorative details with dimensional paint

And the mechanical heart is ready to use!!

It will make more sense if you write some nice words on the paper strip and give it to someone very special!!