Hi there and welcome to another Friday Findings video. Today I am going to show you a fun
polymer clay technique. I love doing this! It's exciting seeing the colors blend and
what I'm talking about is taking two colors, any two colors of your choice in polymer clay
and making a smooth ombre blend from one to another. The technique I'm doing today is
called a skinner blend because it was figured out by a lady named Judith Skinner.
So the first thing you'll need is of course two colors of polymer clay and it's good if
you have one that's quite a bit darker and one that's lighter. Then your blend really
shows up, but you can blend any two colors that suit your purposes. So here I have Sculpey
Souffle in Lagoon and an old package of Premo! in Zinc Yellow and I'm going to open these
packages and condition these clays.
And just to show you what I mean by conditioning, here's my Zinc Yellow clay and I've taken
it out of the package and run it through the pasta machine a few times or alternatively
you could use an acrylic roller and roll it out, but you always want to condition clay
before you use it to remix the particles evenly throughout and if they're not mixed, it's
going to be dry and crumbly like these edges and when you bake your clay that hasn't been
properly conditioned, it can get brittle. It can have weak spots, so you always want
to take it, what I usually do is cut a block like this into maybe four slices this way
and run them through the pasta machine and then stack them. So here's two that I've run
through and two more and then stack them and run through maybe a dozen times and you'll
see a big difference when I come back.
So I'm back and now you can see that this clay is conditioned. The edges aren't crumbly,
but they're smooth. It's nice and pliable and you always want to get your clay to this
state anytime before you start working with it. Like I said, a pasta machine is awesome,
but you can do it with an acrylic roller.
So now I have both my clays conditioned and by the way, even a clay that comes out of
the package nice and soft and feels pliable and ready to work, you still should knead
it a bit with your hands or with a roller just to condition it. So we have our two sheets
all conditioned and now the next step is to cut them into equal size and shaped pieces
to make our blend. I'm just going to use a ruler to cut along two bottom and two top
edges. Like I said, what I'm trying to do is make these the same size and shape. So
just cut off those uneven bits and I'll turn them 90 degrees and then cut the other two
sides. If you're doing small amounts, you could use just a cookie cutter or a square
cutter. There.
Okay, so now we have our two equal size pieces of clay and now I'm going to take my clay
blade and I'm going to make a diagonal cut. First I'm going to make a mark and if you
want to you can measure. I'm not big on measuring, but I'll show you. Make a mark and in this
case I'm going to make it about 3/8" from the bottom right and then also from the top
left. Now I'm going to use my blade and line it up on each of those marks and make a diagonal
cut on each of my pieces. Now I'm going to stack like colors on top of each other, matching
up this little blunt tip.
So line up your diagonal and then just smooth it down this way. That way you don't trap
any air bubbles. Air bubbles in polymer clay aren't good because when you bake it in the
oven it can cause you problems. And then the same over here and next we're just going to
meet these long diagonals together. Now the reason we have this little bit, this blunt
tip over here is that this part is going to remain our pure yellow color.
If we cut a perfect triangle from corner to corner, we wouldn't have any of our pure yellow
or pure blue left. So it depends on what you want when you're making a blend. And then
just use your fingers to kind of gently smoosh those seams together. Use your clay blade
to flip it over and then smoosh the other side. Now I'm going to feed this through
my pasta machine once and I'm going to send it through with my blunted edges against the
rollers.
So I sent that sheet through on the thickest setting of my pasta machine and now this is
what you get. From this point on, we're going to send this through the pasta machine probably
about 25 times. The first step is to fold your sheet always meeting like colors, so
the blue to the blue and the yellow to the yellow and don't worry about this edge. These
top edges are going to get wonky. Don't worry about them. Don't try to match them. Match
your long edges. I'm going to fold this in half and then send this through the pasta
machine.
So here's the pasta machine set on the thickest setting and I'm always going to feed my sheet
through fold first. That way any air is pushed out as you feed it through. It does that.
Like I said, this end will get a little wonky. We're just going to keep folding, lining up
the edges, keeping blue to blue and yellow to yellow. Notice I didn't do any rotating.
Keep it in the same position and fold it again.
Now after about a dozen turns, you may say "wow, what a mess! What is she doing", but
you just have to keep going. Now notice that I've lost my little yellow edge over here,
but I'm not worried about it really. I can always add more of my solid yellow if I need
it on my project.
Now here we are after about 20 passes and now it's starting to look like something.
Now the final step is to make this into something that you can use in your projects. So let
me show you two ways you can do that. I'm going to cut this in half. So I cut this the
long way so I have a long strip. I kind of folded over that extra bit and I'm just going
to run it through the pasta machine. I'm going to lower the setting from the thickest, from
one down to like three and then run it through the long way and try to keep it perpendicular
to the rollers. It tends to want to move as you do that, but just try to get it to be
straight.
That's fine and then I'm going to crank this down to a five and do that again. This does
a couple of things. Of course it makes it thinner and it makes it longer and it makes
your blend much, much smoother. So I have this very long piece. I'm going to repeat
on the other one. So now I have my long blends of clay and there are many things you can
do with these. What I'm going to show you to do with this one is how to make just a
block of blend, an ombré blended cube.
You start by tucking under one end. It depends on what you need, but probably 3/4" or so
and as always we try to avoid air bubbles so you press that fold and then press it like
this just to try to press out any air bubbles and now I'm going to accordion fold this,
keeping it about 3/4" wide, pressing each fold and then pressing down and back. Just
like this the whole length of your strip doing your best to keep it straight. Now there are
lots of other ways to make blends and especially if you don't have a pasta machine, I encourage
you to seek them out.
YouTube is a great place full of tutorials. There are also lots of free classes at CraftArt.ed.com.
I teach polymer clay classes there. I have a free class and I also have a couple other
classes that you can purchase, but there's a whole library of free classes and not just
in polymer clay. There's jewelry making and several different crafts. I encourage you
to check them out. I'll put the link in the description box below.
Now you can squish this and make it long this way or I could squish it and make it flatter
this way. You can manipulate this however you need to for your project. So let me just
trim an end here for you and there you have it. Beautiful clay blend. These are gorgeous
for making leaves or all kinds of things, but let me show you what to do with the other
strip.
You can make what's called a bullseye cane. So the bullseye, you have to decide first
what color you want in the center, the light or the dark and then you just start by rolling
this up nice and tight. Like I said you don't want any air bubbles in there and then you
just roll it, again keeping it straight. Roll it tight. I'm trying to keep it straight.
Let me trim off an end so you can see what we've got and there you have it. A beautiful
blended cane. You can squish this down so it's much thinner or squish it this way so
it's fatter. You could shape it so it's square or triangular or anything you want. So many
great polymer clay projects begin with either this or this. Some kind of a blend, either
stacked or rolled into a bullseye.
If you love this video, please be sure you've subscribed to my YouTube channel so you'll
see more like it and also check out the videos up on the screen where I show you a couple
more polymer clay projects.
Thanks for watching. Happy creating. Bye bye.