Technique of the Month January 2001 Polymer Clay Polyzine

Technique of the Month
By Dianne Cook

Swatch This!!
Recipes for Mica Clay and Skin Colors

Jumping Jiminy!! I promised myself that I would stay on one topic this month, and I did, kinda'. Sort of. At least, we are going to talk about recipes! However, I couldn't settle on which group of recipes to share with you. I think I am doing fairly well, though, to have settled on just two groups. You see, I have over 200 recipes in my files for polymer clay colors, inclusion mixes, palettes and faux combos.

Over the next several months, I will share several of these with you. This month we will begin with a mica clay recipe and my favorite skin color recipes.

Since many of you are using the Premo metallics to produce fabulous mica shift art, I was curious to see if we could make our own mica clay with various mica products and translucent clay. Through a series of experiments, I have drawn some conclusions and have a simple (very simple!) recipe to make mica clay.

I experimented using Fimo Soft #014 and Premo bleached translucent clays. The mica products that I used were Pearl Ex, Powdered Pearls, and Perfect fx (results of using Perfect fx will be shared in a future article).

The proportions I used were 1 block clay to 1/4 rounded teaspoon mica powder.

In the pictures, the mittens are Premo Bleached and the feet are Fimo Soft #014. Under each of them are rectangles cut to show the mica shift properties.

Picture 1 shows the results from mixing Watermelon Red Powdered Pearls in each of the two clays. The Premo Bleached wins hands down over the Fimo Soft #014 for mica shift properties.

However, the Fimo Soft #014 keeps the original color of the mica powder better than Premo Bleached. You can see the color and mica shift contrasts better still in Picture 2 where Pearl Ex Duo Green-Yellow is used in the clays.

Another thing that I noticed in Picture 2 is that the duo colors of the mica product show off the mica shift properties even more. I wondered if that would hold true if I used a combination of mica powder colors.

Picture 3 shows a comparison between the original mix of Premo Bleached and Watermelon Red Powdered Pearls (at top) and a mix of equal parts of Watermelon Red Powdered Pearls and Pearl Dust with Premo Bleached (at bottom). Mixing 2 contrasting mica colors seems to enhance the mica shift properties. Another example, Picture 5, has a mix of Powdered Pearls Coral and Gold Dust in it.

Since I want to use the mica clays for their mica shift properties, the color change is secondary in importance. I have concluded the best recipe to make mica clay is as follows:

1 block of Premo Bleached
1/4 rounded tsp. Mica powder (mix equal parts of 2 contrasting colors mica powders)

Either Powdered Pearls or Pearl Ex appear to work equally as well.

Condition the clay. Roll it through #5 on pasta machine to make a very thin sheet. Place mica powder mix in center and roll sheet up. Roll into ball, then into snake, twist and repeat until mica powder is thoroughly blended into the clay.

Have fun playing with this simple recipe! I would love to see your results. If you would like to share them, I promise to add them to the new page, Virtual Recipe Box, on my website, www.wdpstudio.com! Just email me at : wdpstudio@voyager.net.

Here are my personal favorite skin color recipes! I only use Premo clay in my skin recipes. I love its translucent quality for skin.