Hi there.
Sandy here.
Welcome to another polymer clay video at KeepsakeCrafts.net.
Today I'm going to show you a really fun technique that you can do with any of your polymer clay
scraps and then use it as a veneer or to make beads or anything you like.
So this technique starts, like I said, by using your polymer clay scraps and this is
how I organize my scraps.
It's by color.
I have another bin with other colors, pinks and purples and such, but the one I've decided
to do today, I'm going to show you how to make one that's blues and greens, but choose
any color you like.
And so I just dug through my scrap bin and you want to pull out some lights, some darks,
a variety of colors so a green/blue and a light green and a bright green.
I also like to throw in some metallics and this is the mix I ended up choosing.
Like I said, some darks, some lights, some metallic, some pearl.
I think this is a bit of a cane that had translucent in it.
So a whole variety of greens and blues that will blend together nicely to make a great
pattern.
So the first thing you need to do is take all of your pieces and run them through the
pasta machine to condition them and here are all my pieces conditioned.
And now I'm just going to stack them up and I'm going to kind of put contrasting colors.
So I may put colors that will stand out next to each other, but I'm not overly worried
about it at all.
I'm just going to make a stack.
The next thing is to take your acrylic roller and just flatten out this stack a bit.
And then I'm going to cut it about in half, stack them up again, keeping them going the
same way otherwise they'll be meeting like to like.
I don't want to do that.
Stack them up again, roll it out a bit and now I'm going to cut this the long way.
So you'll have four layers of each of your colors and the reason I did this the long
way is because my next step is to shape this into a bit of a log.
So I'm going to roll it out.
My tile is about 6" so about 6" long and you can see all those little tiny scraps actually
make a fair amount of clay.
And then you just start twisting it and once you have it twisted, go ahead and roll over
it with your acrylic roller again.
Just start to flatten it.
Once I have it thin enough, I'm going to send it through my pasta machine on the thickest
setting.
So here's my sheet after being rolled through the pasta machine and you can see that I'm
getting these stripes, but I definitely want more subtle striping than this.
So I'm going to fold it in half and I'll probably instead of trying to match up the stripes,
I'll offset them a little bit and then send it through your pasta machine again, fold
first.
And here it is after another roll through the pasta machine and now the stripes you
can see are much more subtle.
If there's one side that you like better than the other then have that side on the outside
and I'm going to do just one more fold here and roll through the pasta machine.
And here it is.
Now my stripes are nice and subtle.
I kind of like that.
Now I'm going to roll this through the pasta machine.
The thickest setting on mine is a 1 so I'm going to roll it on a 3.
I don't want it much thinner than that.
Now I'm just going to take a moment and trim off some of these ends that don't look so
good.
You can save those and use them later.
And then I'm going to make a cut somewhere around a 45 degree angle to the stripes.
It doesn't have to be exact, but the less steep you make it, the less sharp your design
will be in your patterned clay.
So since there's already an angle over here, I'm just going to cut that angle.
And then I'm going to continue to cut strips of clay somewhere around 1/4" thick.
This doesn't have to be precise, but it's good to have a nice sturdy blade that will
stay straight so don't use your flexible blade for this.
It's better to have straight strips.
So here's my piece with all of the strips cut and now I have another tile to work on
and I'm just going to pick up a piece and lay it down.
If you see the lumps in my clay, I wondered if this would be a problem.
Some of my scrap clay, here it is, it has opal clay, which are flecks of some kind of
little shiny plastic to make it opalescent looking and that's the lumpy bits, but I don't
think I'm going to let that bother me.
So I'm going to just try to make this first one nice and straight and now this is where
your angles come into play.
We're going to flip it over.
Now you may not have areas that match exactly when you flip it over because you'll have
to use the other side, but what you can try to do is find areas that you're going to match
across the whole piece.
So this blue to this blue and this one to this and this to this.
I'll just match every time.
You can see why you don't want to make these too thin or they're just impossible to pick
up without distorting and then let's see.
And if they don't match at all, that's okay too.
It will look good in the end and if you're having trouble making it straight- let's put
that sharp side down- just use your blade.
It will help you nudge them into place.
So every other one gets flipped over.
Butt them nice and tight up against the other piece.
So now I've reassembled my clay sheet, but it looks quite different and really quite
interesting.
And I may not have lined things up perfectly down there, but it really in the long run
doesn't matter.
So now you just need to take your acrylic roller and try to meld them together.
You don't want to flatten it too much because you'll end up distorting your piece, but you
do want to sort of meld those seams together.
They will be visible in the final product unless you roll it through the pasta machine
so much that the design gets really stretched out of shape.
So that's just part of this design is that you see those lines that you cut.
And so here it is and you can do all sorts of things with this.
Here's something I made earlier out of purples and reds and I have some gold and some other
metallics in there.
I just love the way they look and I've just started to cover an Altoids tin with that.
And here's a ring.
Here's a ring just like it and so I just picked a spot on the sheet that I liked and basically
used the ring as a cutter to cut that section out and baked it and then I cut a strip sort
of like this and then wrapped it around so I get that zigzag.
But you can see in this case I tried to keep my zigzag pattern intact.
And if this seems a little thin, you can take some of those scraps and some other scrap
clay, maybe some of the edging trimmings, roll them out into a sheet.
Use your clay blade to lift that up and put it all on a solid sheet.
That will help keep it all together and give it a little bit more thickness.
So you can really do with this whatever you like.
I've got some leftover bits of my purple sheet.
Here's a bead that I made.
So have fun coming up with things you can use this veneer on to enhance your polymer
clay work and add some interest to the background.
For these, I'll probably add some sculpted floral accents is what I have in mind.
So if you're interested in the supplies I used, there's a link in the upper right and
in the description box to go to my blog post.
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Happy creating.
Bye bye.