i wanted to make a mockingjay pin for my daughter. for those not familiar, the mockingjay pin is from the hunger games trilogy written by susanne collins. it is a recurring symbol in the series of books, and the pin is depicted below on the cover of the first book of the series.

i had some copper coloured fimo (a brand of clay which you can bake to harden) left over from a previous project…

i didn’t have proper clay moulding tools, but i made do with some wire, toothpicks, double pointed knitting needles, and a playing card for cutting straight lines.

{ sorry about the grainy quality of some of these photos } 

i made the circle part of the pin with wire, then covered it with clay.

i got the idea of using wire to support both the circle and the arrow structures from this excellent tutorial on deviant art. the artist shows you how to create their version of the pin, with instructions on how to make the various parts of the bird, textures on the wings and so on.

as for my mockinjay, i had to slightly tweak the image from the cover. my mockinjay’s head, for example, rests on the circular ring unlike the cover version which does not touch the ring. i did this because the clay would flop down otherwise. i’m sure there is a trick around that, like resting it on something during moulding and baking.

once the clay was all moulded into shape, i baked it in the oven at 230° F (110° C) for 30 minutes as directed on the package of fimo. i let it cool for a day.

meanwhile, i went to purchase a bar pin to glue onto the back. try buying just one pin. i challenge you. the smallest i could find was a package of sixty pins.

good grief. i’m gonna have to open a pin shop.

so anyway, once the clay was cured the next day, i put a small dab of glue on the back and pressed the pin into place. i found this “amazing goop” glue worked really well. just heed the warnings about using it in a well ventilated area.

crazy glue might have worked, but i didn’t use it because it dries quite brittle and i thought it may crack. i found that the goop glue was a nice mix between rubber cement and crazy glue, so it really held the pin and clay together.

and that was it. from the back:

and front:

what would you make out of fimo clay? what would you make if you had, oooh say, 59 pin backings just lying around?