All year I’ve been meaning to use up the polymer clay scraps from last winter’s Christmas ornament projects. In the spring I completed some projects using my leftover mokume gane and crackle veneers, but the leftover watercolor veneer has sat wrapped up in my craft drawer for about 10 months. Finally, a few weeks ago, I decided to take a brief break from my dollhouses and use up some of these scraps. Like my previous leftover projects, these pieces are intended to someday become pendant and earring sets, though I still haven’t gotten around to turning any of them into jewelry. That will be a goal for 2019!
These two sets are practically identical, only with different color schemes. I chose my colors months ago, mixing Premo pearl and metallic colors to match those in the baked watercolor Christmas ornaments. What I didn’t anticipate, however, was that the alcohol inks on the raw clay would have faded so drastically. The green and yellow hues in the blue set and the yellows and oranges in the pink set have all but disappeared. Nevertheless, I kept the colors of my original vision but changed the dominant color in the second set from green to aqua.
For each set, I used Patricia Roberts Thompson’s mica mash technique for the bottom section and a mica shift on the back. For those unfamiliar with polymer clay techniques, mica shift involves a texture imprinted into clay that has mica particles in it. When the raised bits are shaved off, you are left with an amazing illusion: the textured pattern is still visible, even though the surface is now completely smooth.
This first one uses the Kor roller Tri Spiral Skies for the mica shift texture.
For the next set, I used Lisa Pavelka’s Stripe Tube texture sheet.
I ended up with a bunch of scraps from my trial and error attempts with the blue/green mica mash, much of which was the Premo white clay that I was using as a backing. Instead of throwing it all into my container of scrap clay, I thought I’d try making some Natasha beads (a scrap-clay technique that results in a random mirror-image pattern). I used the darker blue color from the above set as a backing, with the Kor roller Wild for the mica shift.
There are still more scraps of watercolor veneer left, as these projects didn’t use nearly all of it. And on top of that, I now have test bits of mica mash, as well as the remainder of the mica mash canes…so lots more leftover projects are in my future!
