When I first started looking into making charms from Fimo, I admit the size of those tiny little things was a bit daunting. But making tiny unicorns – well who doesn’t want to do that?! I just had to try, and if it was too fiddly well at least I would have tried once in my life to make an actual tiny unicorn.
In the beginning I started with white Fimo – but white is tricky – it picks up every grain of dirt from your fingers – even if they looked clean and you washed your hands and scrubbed your nails, well white Fimo doesn’t care, it will pick up the tiniest bit of fluff and make your creation look grubby. So I soon gave up on that. For my unicorns I used an Effect Fimo – a white stone look with a little bit of sparkle (because, hey we are talking about unicorns – sparkle is definitely necessary.) This is just much more forgiving – the sparkle hides any dirt that the clay may pick up and with the stone look it’s naturally a tiny bit grey. In the picture above with the two unicorns in my hand – the one on the left is white Fimo, on the right, it’s Effect. Can you see the difference?
Now we make two little balls – one slightly bigger than the other. We squeeze the big one into a kind of cube, then round it off and then pull the corners to make legs (a bit like pac-man in fact), the other smaller one we make slightly triangular. This is the body and the head. And then pinch two tiny ears on the top of the triangular one with your fingernail. Then (sorry unicorns) we stab our unicorn through the body and head with a jewellery pin – a long one. This is going to keep the head on the unicorn and also create a hanger in the end.
Now we’re onto unicorn horn – the trickiest bit, here we need the most minuscule bit of gold Fimo and a bit of beige, make two teeny tiny sausages and twist them together. Because unicorns definitely have twisty horns right? Here you need a bit of wire to insert into the horn and then attach to the head – this is delicate stuff, but without the wire the horn would likely just snap off. After they are baked I do give the horns a good tug and if there is any movement then I apply glue.
Now we make lots of coloured spaghetti bits of polymer clay in whichever colours your mane and tail will be. Carefully attach each strand individually with a modelling tool or cocktail stick and shape around the ears and back – we need to push the bits into the body otherwise they will just come off after baking, but gently gently. Fimo sticks to Fimo, but it needs to be securely pressed together.
Once our mane and tail is attached our unicorn is ready for a bake in the oven, at 110 degrees in a fan oven, for about 45 minutes. After baking and cooling I like to give my unicorns a good coat of Fimo varnish – this just helps all those tiny bits to stay together and makes everything shiny – yeah baby! All that is left then is to use a pair of round nosed pliers to bend the wire into a spiral hanger (cut it if it’s too long) and add a tiny black dot on each side for an eye – I use fine enamel paint markers on Fimo for this kind of thing.
