Polymer Clay Productions, Inc.Polymer Clay Productions

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So, you’ve seen powdered pigments at the craft stores, packaged under names like Perfect Pearls and Pearl-ex, and even online manufacturers of beads and scrapbooking supplies have gotten into the idea of selling pigments. What are they and how do you use them? That’s what we are talking about today, and will be showing next week in our videocast. You must come back next Friday to watch the show, because that’s how you will really understand what we are talking about.

Pigments have been used since art was born. Cave dwellers used natural materials such as plant parts and iron ores to leave marks on cave walls…now kids have the same idea when they use manufactured chalks on the sidewalk. A powdered pigment is by nature, dry. You can try anything with polymer clay- eye makeup, shavings from pastels, fine glitters…but you will really want to try using finely ground powdered pigments made especially for the task. We have our own line, and in the future you will see many more carefully crafted colors.

Here’s the book we talked about today, The Polymer Clay Techniques Book. An excellent source of info, especially for newbies, and it has so many techniques even old-timers will find something to spark their creativity.

Powdered pigments work great with clay because the clay is tacky before baking, and anything (everything!!! Including lint and cat hair!!!) will stick to it easily. So for this technique, you will be exploiting the tacky nature of the clay. Powdered pigments go a long way. You do not need a lot to cover a piece, in fact when you get really excited and work with it a lot, you will probably lose/waste as much as you put onto the clay. Don’t use it on a windy day…it will blow away. In fact, don’t sneeze in it’s presence- same result. You can apply it with your fingers or a brush. Ilysa likes to use her fingers, Kira has a special soft brush that was actually made for watercolor painting. You can use one color, or a few, on the same piece. As long as you have bare clay showing, you can get pigment stuck to it.

Here’s a starter list of ways to use powdered pigments:
• highlight the raised areas on a textured piece of clay
• use it on a stamp as a mold release
• mix it into translucent clay to add tint and sparkle
• mix it into liquid clay to add color
• mix it into your sealer as a final splash of color and sparkle
• coat your clay, stamp into it, bake, and then sand off the high parts- see the pigment stuck in the cracks?

You will invent your own ways of using powdered pigments, why not come over to the forum or post on our flickr group to show them off?

Don’t forget to check out the Caning Competitions and Swaps that we talked about- at MaryLExhibit.

Next week we will show you all this and more on Polymer Clay TV…and we are also releasing our second Downloadable tutorial video. This one shows us making mini books using textured clay covers with pigment powders and papers by Basic Grey. They were kind enough to sponsor the show and sent us a selection of papers and fibers to play with. Their paper is so fun we had a really hard time deciding which ones to use! But we have created three fun kits for you, if you purchase the kit you can follow right along with the video to make your own book.

Visit BasicGrey to check out their fabulous line of papers!

Remember to sign up for the newsletter this week! We will be releasing our first one shortly, and also announcing the winner of this month’s contest. All newsletter subscribers are automatically entered. This month you could win one of our kits!

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Well Kira has done her magic and we are now back in Itunes for those of you that listen and watch us there. We have a new show this Friday of Polymer Clay Podcast so make sure to check that out. We talk about powdered pigments and will demonstrate them next week on Polymer Clay TV. The Polymer Clay Artists Guild Of Etsy is having their monthly challenge and this month the theme is Self Portrait and you can vote for your favorite and have a chance to win one of our cool kits. You can cast your vote by following the directions on the guilds website http://www.pcagoe.com

We also have some discussions going on in the forum so please feel free to join us. Kira and I were looking at our stats for the website and we are happy to say that people are listening and watching us around the world. I noticed visitors this week from China, Germany, United Kingdom, Croatia, Japan, France, Israel, Canada and so many other places that I am going to have to look up on the map. Thanks to everyone for supporting the show!

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Well, it’s been a whirlwind week as we worked on more video stuff. We decided to partner with a company called Tradebit. They are a video aggregator- which means that they collect video, and help distribute it. Either for free, or for sale. They have a great download system, and they enable subscriptions to be easily managed. So now, when you see a downloadable tutorial you would like to purchase in our shop, you will briefly visit our page on tradebit.com to make that purchase. It’s pretty easy, I have everything linked up so when you are over at tradebit you can come back over here or to the shop.
If you sign up for a money-saving subscription- to receive more than one download at a discounted price, this is how it works- you pay for the subscription in our shop, and then we send you an email invitation to join your subscription group at tradebit. All the files you are entitled to via your subscription plan will be available to download over there. The only thing we want to remind you of is that as the merchant, Polymer Clay Productions pays for your download every time you download it. So we would prefer if you would download and save it to your harddrive so you can view it anytime you like. Tradebit explains that step during the download process. In fact, the ease of downloading was the reason we chose them. If you have any issues with accessing your downloads, just remember to contact us and we’ll help you out.
Have a great day!

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This week we are working with powdered pigments. Powdered pigments are a lot of fun to create with. There are so many ways to use them and we will be discussing them this Friday on Polymer Clay Podcast and demonstrating them next Friday on Polymer Clay TV. Powdered pigments come in a variety of colors that look different when used on different colors of polymer clay. I love to add powdered pigments to impressed designs on black clay because the pigments are so vibrant. We hope you have as much fun experimenting with them as we did! There are all kinds of discussions going on in the our forum so check them out when you get a chance and feel free to ask any questions or post any classes or events that are polymer clay related. Our first full project tutorial is now in our shop so if you want to learn how to make a variety of magnets that are great for gifts you can check that out. We appreciate all the nice comments and all your support. Happy Claying!

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Good Morning! We had an issue with our video on Friday not uploading into our itunes account. We worked on it all weekend and hopefully it will be ready by this evening. It has been fun delving into the world of video production. So many unexpected twists and turns! But it’s so rewarding to figure out a problem and take care of it, and to know that once you do, you don’t ever have to have that problem again. Hence, problems become opportunities. A great life lesson.

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Have you ever wondered how polymer clay artists get such wonderful visual textures on their clay pieces? This episode will show the basics- how to choose a texture tool with a nicely impressed image or design, and how to get your clay into and out of the texture tool easily.

First of all, you need a rubber stamp, texture sheet, rolling pin, or some other tool with a texture on it- and that texture should be “deeply impressed.” What that means is if it isn’t deep enough, it won’t leave a good mark in the clay. Here are some pictures of the stamps we used.

Before and while using your texture tools, you need to decide if a release is needed. If your clay is too mushy and sticky, or if it’s hot and humid, or if your stamp or tool is really deep and your clay gets stuck in it when you practice, you will probably need a release. This is just something that will get between your clay and your tool and keep the clay from sticking inside the tool. Water is a great release with polymer clay because the clay is not water soluble. Cornstarch is another good one- but only in certain circumstances. Cornstarch will stick to your clay and get onto it- but after baking, it dissolves in water. So it’s a good choice if you are going to decorate your clay after baking it. Not a good choice, say, if you want to decorate your clay with powdered pigments or inks prior to baking, because the cornstarch will stick to the clay and get in the way of the other things you might want to put on the clay. If you have some pigment powders you can try using that as a release. Just dust the clay and stamp with powdered pigments and stamp away. You can also try using pigment inks- I stamp all over the texture sheet and press my clay onto it. The ink gets into the crevices of the stamp and the wetness keeps the clay from sticking. Experiment and see which release works best for you!

Here is a link to purchase the full length video tutorial on how to use texture sheets to create magnets, Lesson # 1. A great gift!
Download:

And here is the Companion Kit, with all the materials and supplies you need to follow right along with the video. Our kits make excellent gifts, too.

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