When I think about the scoring technique I always think of making a sheet and then wrapping it around beads or making something flat like a pendant. As I like using stringing-beads as an experimentation zone, I thought it would be a good time to think using this technique in a different context. So here’s one, using combing on an oval bead.

Materials

• Different colours of clay - I had some conditioned green, greenish turquoise and white on my table

Tools and equipment

• Darning needle or something similar to use for combing
• Oven 
• Glass sheet or ceramic tile to use as a work sheet
• Toothpicks
• Pasta roller
• Acrylic roller
• Cookie cutters

Method

Condition your clay. Roll out the turquoise, green and white clay into sheets using the thickest setting on my pasta machine.  I want to add two discs on the side of the bead where the holes will be. So at this point cut two (or 2 for each bead you want to make) discs out of the green sheet. Place it on a glass sheet and make a hole in the centre of the disc, put it in the oven and bake according to the clay manufacturer’s instructions. 

I wanted to have the green in the middle, with the other colours on each side. So you would need two white, two turquoise and one green sheet. I wanted the green to be quite thick, the white thin and the turquoise on a medium thickness. Fold the green sheet in half so that you have twice the thickness of the thickest setting of the pasta machine. Roll the white clay through your pasta machine again at a thinner setting; I used the third thinnest setting on mine. I left the turquoise clay to the thickest setting.  Trim the sheets to be the same size, the size is dependent on how many beads you want to make. Use your cookie cutters to cut a disc out of the clay. 

I wanted to make quite large beads, so I used a cookie cutter of about 2 cm (0.8 inches) diameter. Roll the white clay in your hands to make a log of the same diameter as your cut out disc. Cut about 5cm (2.5inches) of your log of to make the bead. Cut that piece in half. Put the disc you cut out in between the two logs and press it together to make the join. 

Press the ends together to start making an ovoid shape, make a hole through the bead with a toothpick. Now we can shape the bead. Hold the ends of the toothpick with the bead on it. You should hold it at an angle so that the right part of the bead touches the glass sheet. Gently move the bead backwards and forwards. Change the angle you hold the toothpick at so that the left side of the bead is on the glass sheet and move it backwards and forwards. Then hold the toothpick even and move it back and forward so that the centre of the bead becomes rounded too. When you roll the bead in this way it sometimes happens that the hole increases in size. That’s OK. To get this shape you usually have to roll the bead 2 or three times. If the hole becomes big just press the clay close to the toothpick again and roll it a few more times. 

Image 1 shows how the bead should look now.

Take your darning needle and gently pull it through the clay from left to right. Score the bead at intervals of about 5mm (0.2 inches).  Image 2. Take the darning needle and pull it through the clay right to left scoring it in the opposite direction than before. Image 3. 

Reshape the bead. It should look like image 4 at this point.

Roll the bead backwards and forwards on the sheet of glass using while holding the edges of the toothpicks. Continue rolling until the scoring marks are smoothed over. You may have to reshape the bead by pinching the edges [image 5] and continue rolling before it is smooth. 

If you’re happy with the shape and smoothness of the bead, we can attach the bead caps (the light green discs we baked earlier). Image 6. Smooth the clay over the baked clay to get a smooth join. Image 7 shows the side view of the bead before baking. Your bead should look like image 8 when you’re finished.