Before I forget

Tags

art bead, cabochon, earrings, mica powder, polymer clay

I made another pair of forget-me-not earrings that I kept aside for a separate blog. And here’s why…

Forget-me-not earrings by Cate van Alphen

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I have made a Patreon page. It’s a site for creators to find sponsors in order to spend more energy on creating and less time worrying about how to pay the bills. As part of making my page I clarified some goals for myself: I want to use more art beads (made by other artists) and I want to make more tutorials.

I planned for the earrings above to incorporate both goals. I’ve got the art beads: I made the ivory coloured floral disks from polymer clay and the blue ceramic beads are by Jenny Gholson-Morris. But the tutorial part: not so much.

Making a video tutorial is proving more time-consuming than anticipated – I’m struggling to get footage that is in shot and in focus. Oh, right! This is why I set up the Patreon page in the first place – because at the moment I haven’t got much time for figuring this out. So until I can make a full tutorial, here’s a little tip.

Faux concrete cabochon by Cate van Alphen

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I made this cabochon as a way to use up the scraps from making carved beads. The muse wanted a matt concrete effect. My logical brain tells me this is to contrast with the shiny fragments. I wanted something more interesting so I drew in some scrolls and dots. I thought it still needed some subtle pep so I mixed green iridescent mica powder with a drop of water to paint into the dents. This caused the water (and mica) to puddle in the indentations and not all over the surface of the piece. I did the same thing for the petals of the flowers on the earrings.

I used Perfect Pearls for this technique as it has a built-in resin and I painted it onto uncured polymer clay. It didn’t seem to stick as well when painted onto baked clay.

By the way, if you would like to sponsor me, you can start from $1 a month and change your mind any time you like.

 

Red colour palette recipes

Tags

colour mixing, colour recipe, Fimo, polymer clay, red

Here are my colours for the red palette of my Spectrum Year. I had a bit of a struggle adding a sixth colour, but I decided on something eventually.

Here are the recipes using Fimo Professional. The numbers are percentages. I wrote an earlier blog explaining how I measure colours.

Light Grey

• 95 white
• 1.5 true magenta
• 3.5 true blue

Red

• 60 true red
• 40 true magenta

Carmine

• 20 true red
• 79 true magenta
• 1 black

Plum

• 19 true red
• 76 true magenta
• 5 black

Purple

• 50 white
• 40 true magenta
• 10 true blue

Blue Grey

• 65 white
• 10 true magenta
• 23.5 true blue
• 1.5 black

Violet colour palette

Tags

colour mixing, colour palette, Fimo, polymer clay, purple, violet

I’m a little late with the start of violet since I wanted to finish my indigo beads. Here are the colour recipes I plan to use. I’m using Fimo Professional and the numbers represent percentages. Previously I wrote a post on how I mix colours.

Light Grey

• 95 white
• 1.5 true magenta
• 3.5 true blue

Grey Green

• 61.5 white
• 3 true yellow
• 10 true magenta
• 23 true blue
• 2 true green
• 0.5 black

Indigo

• 30 true magenta
• 70 true blue

Dark Purple

• 59.5 true magenta
• 39.5 true blue
• 1 black

Violet

• 80 true magenta
• 20 true blue

Purple

• 50 white
• 40 true magenta
• 10 true blue

 

Let the purple-fest commence. Yippee!

Indigo colour palette recipes

Tags

2015PCchallenge, colour mixing, colour palette, fimo professional, Indigo, polymer clay

I’m a little bit late posting my colour recipes for the next step in my 2015 Spectrum Year (if you don’t mind, just hop in your time machine and read this last Tuesday). We went away for the weekend and all of a sudden it was time for indigo! I’m beginning to suspect that I could spend a whole year on each palette :o.

These recipes are for Fimo Professional, and the numbers represent percentages. I wrote a blog explaining how I use them for mixing colours.

Mid Blue Grey

• 65 white
• 10 true magenta
• 23.5 true blue
• 1.5 black

Dark Blue

• 30 true magenta
• 70 true blue

Indigo

• 59.5 true magenta
• 39.5 true blue
• 1 black

Chocolate

• 50 white
• 17 true yellow
• 25 true red
• 8 black

Beige

• 99 white
• 0.45 true yellow *
• 0.05 true green *
• 0.5 black

* (0.5% mix of 90 true yellow 10 true green)

Light Grey

• 95 white
• 1.5 true magenta
• 3.5 true blue

The colours don’t adhere very strictly to the inspiration palette because I wanted the schemes to play nicely together. I decided to increase the differences between the indigo and the purple palettes so the purples are more blue. I also desaturated the green to a beige colour rather than introduce another green (the ones in the green palette were too bright for the other colours).

Yum, those hints of purple are starting to make me drool :).

Blue colour palette recipes

Tags

blue, colour mixing, colour palette, colour recipe, Fimo, polymer clay

Today is the start of my blue period 😉 so here are the colour recipes.

Light Grey

• 95 white
• 1.5 true magenta
• 3.5 true blue

Light Blue

• 80 white
• 20 true blue

Blue

• 100 true blue

Purple

• 50 white
• 40 true magenta
• 10 true blue

Yellow

• 100 true yellow

I haven’t quite finished with green yet as I still have some beads to show for this week of the 2015 Polymer Clay Challenge. Also I’m hoping that I will be able to get some of the green components listed in my Etsy shop soon.

Glitter repair

Tags

Cate van Alphen, glitter, green, handmade beads, polymer clay

I couldn’t bear looking at the cracks in my green beads anymore, but I didn’t want to completely obliterate the green patterns, so I added a layer of transparent polymer clay mixed with green glitter. I backfilled the cracks with some green clay first to reduce the chance of air bubbles being introduced. I made a few spacer beads using the excess transparent clay.

Green glitter beads by Cate van Alphen

This time when I baked them I put the top shelf back into the oven with a tile on top to protect the beads. It seemed to work – I didn’t find any cracks or air bubbles 🙂

Green colour palette recipes

Tags

colour mixing, colour palette, Fimo, green, polymer clay

Today is the start of green. This time I’ve prepared some ideas so the transition should be easier than the switch to yellow.

Here are my green colour palette recipes. I’m using Fimo Professional, and percentages for the quantities (click here to see why):

Beige

• 99 white
• 0.45 true yellow *
• 0.05 true green *
• 0.5 black

* (0.5% mix of 90 true yellow 10 true green)

Light Green

• 95 white
• 2.75 true yellow
• 2 true green
• 0.25 black

Green

• 89 true yellow
• 10 true green
• 1 black

Dark Green

• 57 true yellow
• 38 true green
• 5 black

Grey Green

• 61.5 white
• 3 true yellow
• 10 true magenta
• 23 true blue
• 2 true green
• 0.5 black

Light Grey

• 95 white
• 1.5 true magenta
• 3.5 true blue

Yellow colour palette recipes

Tags

colour mixing, colour recipe, Fimo, polymer clay, yellow, yellow palette

Here are my colour recipes for the yellow colour palette of my Spectrum Challenge. I have used Fimo Professional polymer clay.

Light Yellow

• 99 white
• 1 true yellow

Yellow

• 100 true yellow

Orange

• 95 true yellow
• 5 true red

Chocolate

• 50 white
• 17 true yellow
• 25 true red
• 8 black

Green

• 89 true yellow
• 10 true green
• 1 black

Beige

• 99 white
• 0.45 true yellow *
• 0.05 true green *
• 0.5 black

* (0.5% mix of 90 true yellow 10 true green)

Now I’m off to mix colours 😉

Gradient colour mixing

Tags

colour mixing, Fimo, gradient, polymer clay, skinner blend

I mentioned in my previous post that keeping my colour recipes in percentages helped with mixing gradients.

Sometimes I don’t keep track of my gradient mixes. The one above is made up of coordinating scraps of colour…

which becomes a lovely skinner blend…

that ends up as beads.

At other times e.g. for the Art Bead Scene challenge pieces, I want my gradient to include specific colours to match the inspiration painting.

Here are my colour recipes using Fimo Classic:

• Brick = 25% bordeaux, 25% yellow, 50% white
• Rust = 10% bordeaux, 90% yellow
• Mustard = 2.5% bordeaux, 47.5% yellow, 50% white

I take my grid paper, and using 1 square to represent 10% of the recipe, I mark out the target colours. I leave spaces between them to allow for a gradient blend. I chose to put the bordeaux in the middle for the mustard colour on the right because it was such a small percentage I thought it would be difficult to cut accurately if it were on the bottom.

Then I mark diagonals for the blends. I chose to fade to white on the edges.

Then I cut out the paper shapes to use as a template for the clay.

Here is the resulting blend. I’ve included the target colours – there is a slight difference as the swatches have been baked while the blend is still raw. This method means I can mix the colours at the same time that I make the blend (instead of mixing the 3 colours separately and then blending them).

And here are the beads I made (with an additional magenta colour).

Colour mixing grid paper

Tags

bead making, colour mixing, grid paper, mixing colours, polymer clay, spacer beads

A while back (oops!) I mentioned I have a secret weapon for mixing colours and it is… grid lined paper. By looking directly down and lining up a rigid blade with the lines on the paper and  I can get accurately sized pieces. I use this both for colour mixing and for getting evenly sized beads.

To cut 1/2 a square, I line the blade up diagonally with the corners of the grid (see image above where I’m cutting 5 squares into 2x 2.5 square pieces).

The other thing I do is record my colour recipes in percentages rather than the usual parts ratios. I find this makes it easy to size up (or down) a batch of colour.

For example the colours above are the following mixes of Fimo Classic:

• Brick = 25% bordeaux, 25% yellow, 50% white
• Mustard = 2.5% bordeaux, 47.5% yellow, 50% white

in the usual ratios this would be:

• Brick = 1 bordeaux, 1 yellow, 2 white
• Mustard = 1 bordeaux, 19 yellow, 20 white
• OR Mustard = 1 (1 bordeaux, 19 yellow pre-mixed), 1 white

So if I wished to make 100 spacer beads (each using 1 square of clay) in each colour, I would simply use 1 square of clay for each percent and mix up the perfect quantity of clay. If I were working in the parts method I’d get 4 parts of brick and 40 parts of mustard (or to get equal quantities I’d have to mix up 1 part bordeaux + 19 parts yellow and then use 2 parts of that with 2 parts white and mix a second time). Or I could multiply each part in the brick recipe by 10, and then that’s 80 shapes to cut out.

I don’t know about you, but I find mixing colours a bit of a chore when I’m impatient to make beads so the single mix option appeals to me! There is a further perk to the percentage recipes when mixing gradients which I’ll explain in another post.

Once my colour is mixed I use the grid paper to cut the polymer clay sheet into equal sized squares.

That way I end up with nicely regular sized beads. And providing I write down what I did, if I come back another day, I can make more beads of the same size (e.g. in another colour).