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.

Advertisement

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).

Pearls of polymer clay

Tags

art bead, Art Charm Swap, Cate van Alphen, handmade beads, kanji, mica powder, pearl, perfect pearls, polymer clay

I recently discovered that some mica powders (e.g. Perfect Pearls) have an added resin which means they do not need to be varnished to seal. WOOT! I love the shimmer, but I have been avoiding using them because I find varnishing such a hassle – all that washing brushes and waiting for it to dry…

Since then I haven’t been able to stop myself adding pearlescent powder just about everything.

Kanji pendant by Cate van Alphen. The symbol means “friend”. It is available in my Etsy store.

Blueberry frit beads by Cate van Alphen

These are Stroppel round Natasha beads. See my free tutorial for how I made them.

Yes, I only have one colour of mica powder at the moment, but I have ordered a few more… so watch this space for more pearls of polymer clay.

---

In other news, I have received my Art Charms 🙂 but you will need to wait till after the reveal on 14th November 2014 to see my treasures as I want to include some of the artists’ inspiration.

Mixing colour scales

Tags

colour, colour mixing, Fimo, polymer clay

I love colour, but sometimes it’s daunting knowing where to start, so I have a little box of baked polymer clay tiles. This allows me to collect up a few colours and see how they look together. I scratch in the colour mix recipe before it’s baked so that there is nothing to interfere with the colour of the tile (e.g. if it was written on in pen afterward).

Yes, as a child I spent hours arranging crayons in a box!

Box of colour tiles

These baked colour swatches also give me a place to start when I need to mix a new colour. Before going through Maggie Maggio’s colour tutorials I used to mix colours ad hoc, but now I have made some colour scales that are more systematic.

I used Fimo Classic colours Carmine, Blue and Yellow for the above scale. (Of course I’ll need to start again now for the new Fimo Professional.)

The top row is the pure colour, and the lower row is 50% colour and 50% white. I have added 10% white to all the yellow before any other mixing (see my earlier post for details why).

As you can see I work in percentages rather than the usual 2 parts blue to 3 parts yellow etc. This allows me to more easily calculate the quantities to mix based on how much of the final colour I want. I will endevour to share with you the secret weapon I use for this in another post shortly.

Because sometimes baked beans don’t fit

Tags

box, bracelet mould, paper coil, polymer clay, ring mandrel, vessel

Bettina Welker's Hinged Bracelet Tutorial

I am cheap, but I could not resist BUYING Bettina Welker’s Hinged Bracelet tutorial. So I had to buy some magnets. Then I needed to get some Kato clay (she says in the tutorial that she has made a bracelet using Fimo Classic but it may not be as strong, so I’m planning to make one with Kato and one with Fimo and comparing the results).

The next problem was finding something to use as a baking mould. I have some pastry cutters, but they are not wide enough. Our tumblers taper. My wrists are very small so tin cans are too big, a loo roll is too small and too flimsy. I contemplated buying wooden dowels or taller pastry cutters, but I didn’t want to wait till I could go on a shopping trip and… I am cheap. Therefore I spent a week rummaging through the cupboards and recycling bin checking the sizes of all the jars. Nothing was the right size, but there was a lot of paper.

Then I remembered this tutorial for making boxes using paper streamers and I had the idea of cutting up the junk paper into 5cm wide strips and making a cylinder mould. So two seed catalogues (and some time) later: Behold! A thing of beauty:

Bracelet mould made by wrapping strips of paper

The last layer is a sheet of plain white paper so that the printing does not transfer to the clay. To be extra sure that the clay does not get stuck to the mould I also covered it with tin foil. And so, finally, a bake-able, firm cylinder with a customisable diameter. And not expensive! I’m planning to make a set of smaller ones to use as ring mandrels.

Mould covered with foil

As I am making a hinged bracelet, it gets cut in half off the mould. So far I have successfully made two bracelet cores and they have come off without problem (and I haven’t even cut through the foil). The cylinder has a small amount of “squish” to it, so I believe a solid ring may also slip off without too much trouble. I will try this at some point.

I also want to get round to making the little boxes that the tutorial was intended for as they are delightful. Have a look.