Polymer Clay Workshop

Understanding contrast and value is very important in making blends.  Sometimes you will want a dark to light blend that goes almost to white.  Sometimes, you will want subtle, rich color blends that go from light to dark without losing intensity.  These canes from my Picture Cane Tutorial use the more subtle blends like the Leaf blend and Ocean blue blend.

The subtle blends are basic with only two colors.  So far, the only way I’ve learned to make glowing blends is to use at least three colors.  Because these are a little more involved I’ve made printable stencils for the Sapphire Blue and Glowing green. Glowing color blends

This is Premo brand Ultramarine,  Turquoise and White

To make an Ocean blue blend (the block on the left), just make a basic blend from Ultramarine and Turquoise.

Here you can see the difference in value.

Leaf green The dark green is 2parts black and 5 parts green. The light green is Wasabi.

Glowing green

As I add new recipes, I’ll post them to my pinterest board about

Polymer Clay Color Blends.

Here are the stencils for four different green color blends. These blends are all a bright, pure greens. I came up with these arched cuts because I was tired of obvious lines in the blends when I wanted them to be a smooth transition. Smooth transitions are much easier when the colors are closer in value. That’s why the spring green is just a basic two-color blend. However I wanted the magic green to really glow. I wanted a bend from very light to very dark green without loosing the bright green in the middle.

I’ve done my best with the photographs, but I can’t promise they will look right on your screen.  These are for Premo brand polymer clay.

Here is the the pdf of stencils for what I can Emerald and Magic green. Emerald and Magic green recipe stencils

Emerald Green

The canes are from my Gemstone Cane tutorial.

Magic Green

Here is the pdf for the Summer and Spring green blends. I don’t have extra pictures of the Spring green since it is so easy. Sumer and Spring green recipe stencils

Summer Green

Here is a nice warm color blend.  I’ve added the pdf here in case you want to print it out and cut out the stencils for the colors.Polymer clay sunset blend printable

Above is an example of what this blend looks like in canework.  These cane slices were inspired by my scrollwork tutorial.  The kaleidoscope patterns only worked as single-slice patterns.  Each time I make them they turn out a little different as you can see in extra pictures in the Etsy listing.

Polymer clay cane slices can be added and baked onto many different surfaces.  I’m not good at making jewelry, but I do love to go treasure hunting.  I found these inexpensive stone beads and earrings to cover with mandala canes.

Polymer clay can be baked onto stone, glass, metal and wood.  Just be careful with most kinds of plastic!  It might melt in the oven or react crazy with the clay.  You can use polybond to help the clay stick.  For these projects I did’t need any adhesive.

The mandala cane pattern is found here.

I’ve always loved nesting boxes!  I’ve found nesting box patterns online, but they are too big for polymer clay and they don’t leave space for the lids to fit when the boxes are covered with clay.  Here I’ve designed a free printable pattern in pdf for you to decorate with clay. circular nesting boxes for polymer clay Of course there are many other ways to build boxes.  For this project, I didn’t use the smallest box.  Instead I made a little toy to put in the last box. The inspiration for this particular set of boxes came from permission by Carrie Harvey of Beads from the coast.  Look at this amazing box!

Step 1: Print out and assemble the boxes you want to use.  The sides is longer than the circumference of the circle so that it can be overlapped and glued together.  The black line in each rectangle is the line for the exact circumference.

Step 2: Cover the box with clay and smooth out the seams. Step3: Bake the boxes before decorating them if you want a strong surface to work on.  Use translucent liquid sculpey or some other bond to add more clay.  Here I use slices of the May2015 Cane Builder cane. I added texture with a toothpick. After decorating, bake it again.  I only had to bake the lids.

Step 4: Some people can take out the card stock, or soak it out.  I like to cover the tabs with a second circle of card stock and paint the inside with acrylic paint.  I used black.  You could also use metallic acrylic paint, or cover it with a fancy scrapbook paper.

Here is the little turtle I made for the last little box!

Here are two of countless ways to use marbled ink canes to cover eggs. These canes are made from the bonus tutorial that comes with a subscription to Cane Builder. One of the eggs is tiled with square canes.  I wanted to tile the egg in the same way for the purple egg, but I wanted the canes to have a vertical diamond shape. I wrapped the original cane in a gold blend outline and added purple triangles to the corners.

I’m still not sure if I used the original cane to it’s greatest advantage.  Maybe I could take a single slice and feature it in the middle somehow.  I suppose there is a lot of variation I could add like the egg in this post.  Imagine that egg with a marbled ink cane.  Oh well, maybe next year.

As a painter, I love the way these blended eggs make the perfect “canvas” for countless designs.  It’s amazingly easy to press canes flat into the colored background.  This video shows how I cover the eggs with clay.  I also have a video about how to change a Skinner blend.  This tutorial in my easy shop shows how to make the canes.

I took these eggs to a class for the Arizona Polymer Clay Guild. and Cheri made this gorgeous butterfly cane for me to use on the purple egg from the video!

This weekend I’m headed up to Phoenix to teach a class for the Arizona Polymer Clay Guild!  I am teaching this tutorial and I’ve been busy making lots of example eggs.  Just like the ornaments in this post, some of the eggs have a raised pattern and some of them have a smooth surface.  Cane slices can be worked into clay by rolling them with an acrylic roller.  I’ve posted a shorter video about reducing canes with no background.

Speaking of eggs, I also covered one with the Cane Builder bonus cane!  I could make these forever!