Polymer Clay Christmas Ornaments: Inlaid Mica (plus copper crackle scraps)

For the past couple Christmases I’ve been obsessed with the inlaid mica technique I first saw on Valerie Evans’s “Unruly Housewife” YouTube channel. This year my time was rather limited, given that we had one less week between an unusually late Thanksgiving and Christmas, as well as my suffering through several weeks of bronchitis. But I did manage to complete a handful of ornaments, although the last few never made it onto the tree before we had to take it down for the trash pickup just after New Year’s.

For the front of the ornaments, I used Premo clay (black, except where otherwise noted) textured with a Kor roller, then “painted” with Pearl Ex mica powder. First, I applied mica powder with a tiny brush to the inlaid areas, afterward using clear tape to remove any excess. Then, I used my finger to rub mica powder over the raised areas.

For the reverse side of each ornament, I made a mica shift using the same texture as the front. Despite the illusion of texture here, the clay is completely smooth. I’ll note the color below when I used clay straight from the package. For the rest, I used pearl and metallic color mixes leftover from previous projects.

Kor roller: Fancy Diamond
Mica shift: Premo bronze

Kor roller: Fancy Diamond
Mica shift: Premo bronze
(I gave this one to a friend as a special thank you gift. She had requested greens and earth tones.)

Kor roller: Fancy Diamond
Mica shift: Premo 18k gold

Kor roller: Winter Frost

Kor roller: Square Rhythms

Kor roller: Fall Leaves
Clay on front: Premo white
(Last year I had made a similar ornament with autumn colors and the leaf pattern upside down like falling leaves. This one was intended to represent spring or summer leaves.)

Kor roller: Winter Frost
Clay on front and mica shift: Premo pearl
(For this one, I was experimenting with the five interference colors of Pearl Ex. The colors show up best on black clay but appear very faint on a white background. The first two images below show front and back in normal light. The Pearl Ex colors are subtle, rather like mother-of-pearl. The third image shows the front with the light reflecting at an angle. You can see that the colors are a bit more vivid here.)

These next ornaments represent how one polymer clay project tends to lead to another and then another and so on. When I was doing the mica shift on the first two ornaments above, I was getting some really cool bronze shavings in the Fancy Diamond pattern. (Samantha Burroughs of Jessama Designs calls these “mica frills.”) I decided to create a veneer by placing the bronze “frills” on some black clay.

Then it occurred to me, after having seen Samantha’s recent “Cracklathon” on YouTube (a full month of daily crackle techniques), that the bronze and black veneer might look nice paired with a copper leaf crackle. So I made a bunch of beads using the mica frills, scraps from the bronze mica shift, and some copper leaf crackle on black clay. (I haven’t sanded them yet. Eventually I’ll get around to posting photos of them and can explain more about those techniques when I do.)

But after those beads were finished, I still had some copper leaf crackle left. (You see how one project turns into another and another, in the effort to use up scraps!) I then made these three snowflake ornaments, using the crackle on the reverse side. The front is simply black clay imprinted with various textures (Lisa Pavelka’s Swirly Q texture sheet and the Kor rollers Tri Spiral Skies and Triangles) and Pearl Ex dusted on the raised parts. You may notice that one of the crackles appears darker; this is because I didn’t quite have enough veneer left, so I ran it through the pasta machine to stretch it slightly.