Tucson artist Rebecca Diaz’s handcrafted clay jewelry and accessories blend Latin culture and nostalgia into uniquely intricate designs that celebrate her Mexican heritage.
“I love creating clay jewelry that reminds me of home or things that I grew up with coming from a Mexican family,” she said.
Using polymer clay, Diaz sculpts tiny, extremely detailed earrings that depict food, iconography and other designs that hold significant personal meaning to her.
The talavera style featured in much of her work, Diaz said, reminds her of cups at her grandmother’s house that she grew up drinking coffee from. Similarly, her multicolored hummingbirds have always been associated with her father.
“I do a lot of Frida also,” she said. “I love her art. I don't know what it is, I'm just drawn to her.”
And of course, as her brand name Desierto Designs suggests, she often creates desert-inspired pieces as well. One of her best selling earrings are a representation of the Arizona landscape, complete with a cactus and scorching sun.
“I do a white, brown, and tan color, and I use a cutter that's Arizona State,” she said.
Some of her other popular designs are her food-themed earrings, including her adorable pastel conchas.
“I like empanadas, or even just cookies,” Diaz said. “I've made macaroon earrings before.”
Most of her inspirations come from Latin culture and art she comes across in her daily life.
“Sometimes I'll see a painting, or, one time I was looking for wallpaper for one of my bathrooms, and it had Latin inspiration in it, and it was beige and green with marigolds on it and right away I thought to myself, ‘I can make this like an earring,’” Diaz said.
Rebecca Diaz, owner of Desierto Designs creates clay jewelry inside her Tucson home studio, Oct. 14, 2026.
Before she began working with clay, Diaz said she actually started off doing beading to give herself a creative outlet.
“Then I started dabbling a little bit with clay, and I would see cute little things online, and I was like, ‘I want to make that, but I want to make it mine,’” she said.
It wasn’t until 2020 when the hair salon she rents a private suite in as an independent hairstylist shut down during COVID, that’s when she really began experimenting with her clay creations.
“I was bored and with my anxiety, I was like, ‘I need something to do,’ she said. “Since I like jewelry so much, I was like, ‘let me see what I can do.’ I would YouTube, ‘how do you do this?,’ ‘how do I work with this?’ and I just started combining pieces.”
Soon, Diaz said she had made over 200 pieces of jewelry.
“I had so many pieces. I didn't know what to do," she said. “After everything opened up from COVID, and there were markets going on, a friend of mine was like, ‘why don't you do a market?’”
Each pair of earrings can take her anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours to sculpt the tiny details into the designs.
“It just depends on how intricate and how detailed the design is,” she said.
To make her earrings, Diaz first uses specialized tools to carve and mold the clay, working in batches of six or ten per design.
“I use my little tools to maneuver everything,” she said. “Let's say I'm doing a petal, I lightly smooth it out, and it forms it.”
The pieces then go into a toaster oven for an initial 15 to 20 minutes, before Diaz adds the final details.
An array of handmade earrings for sale at Desierto Designs, Oct. 14, 2026.
“Sometimes when I hand paint things, I'll use acrylic paints or I'll use liquid clay, and the liquid clay does have to get baked also,” she said.
The whole baking process can take up to an hour, Diaz said.
In addition to her clay jewelry, Diaz also sells shirts and apparel, many adorned with clever “Latin-inspired” phrases like “Chisme and Cafecito.”
“I have a really popular one that everyone likes, it just plain says ‘Latina’ on it. Another one that people love is ‘Chismosa Club,’” she said. “It's funny because when customers come to my table, they laugh and they giggle, and I love that. I love seeing them smile when they see something that brings back home.”
“I like doing Latin-inspired candles also,” Diaz said. “A lot of those cups are imported from Mexico, they’re either from Jalisco, Oaxaca, Magdalena.”
The candles are made from soy or coconut wax, and are all hand-poured by Diaz.
“I just try to find scents that remind me, again, of my heritage,” she said. “A lot of people's favorite mix is my horchata latte.”
She currently offers occasional candle-making workshops and said she is planning an event at Chappopin Cafe, 604 N. Stone Ave., in early December.
Compact mirrors inspired by Mexican culture are for sale at Desierto Designs, Oct. 14, 2026.
In the future though, Diaz said she would like to offer workshops to teach others how to work with clay and make their own custom earrings.
“I've been wanting to really do a clay class to teach people how to make earrings,” she said. “It could be like a simple earring, it doesn't have to be crazy. They can have fun and see what it's like to work with clay.”
Diaz said she has also been thinking about getting other vendors together and creating a market.
“I would love to make a market and just see where it goes from there,” she said.
Her earrings can be found at several shops around Tucson, including Sonoran House, Saguaro Square, Proper Shops, and Chappopin Cafe.
“I just really enjoy what I do, and I get nostalgia when I create the things that bring me memories of my childhood, growing up in a Latin home,” Diaz said. “I just hope that my jewelry and my creations bring nostalgia to others also.”
