Colour mixing

Kato Colour mixing Chart - this post can be found on my new blog here

www.carajane.co.uk

Pivot Tile from Color Inspirations and improved confidence.

I finally got round to making a pivot tile from Polymer Clay Color Inspirations. I had a real mental block on this for some reason. I didn't have any orange clay when I got to that section and then I kept on putting it off.

I quite enjoyed it and was quite surprised how much the colour changed with such small additions. I think it will be a useful tool for colour mixing so I shall make some more with the other Kato block colours.

I can see I have quite a lot of air bubbles in the clay. They are such tiny amounts of clay I did a bit of squishing through the pasta machine instead of folding and putting the fold first. I guess that's where they came from.



I spent an evening introducing some friends to polymer clay the other night and I was quite surprised by how confident I felt in guiding their colour choices. Although I haven't worked my way through the book yet I can tell it has definitely improved my confidence with colour already. Particularly for caning, where I sometimes got disappointing results due to poor colour choices. So I would highly recommend it to anyone else who either isn't sure about colour or who just doesn't think about it currently (how I used to be)

Paisley Cane Project

So for the first time ever I have sat down and properly planned a polymer clay project, normally I have a rough idea and just sit down with my clay or pick a tutorial to follow. I wanted to make a set of decorated handle cake forks for my sister in law. She is married to an Indian and has her dining room decorated in an Indian theme and she has recently returned from a holiday to India so I decided to make them based on an Indian theme.

I browsed some images on the internet and collected together some of my favourite and looked at the colours. I liked the bright colours and  settle on a palette to use in my project and even made a contrast table (as suggested in Color Inspiration).

Here are the colours I chose, all custom mixes (chosen from my colour tasting tiles held up against the images I printed) with the exception of the yellow which is straight from the packet. There is a recipe on the back for each colour. This is Kato clay by the way.



I then designed the clay 'fabric' I would make to cover the handles. I decided on a Paisley cane and even did a sketch. I tried to work out roughly how much I would need to make a cane the right size. It would be terrible to run out! I will also use the components from the paisley scattered amongst it, the leaf and the flower.

I started by making a flower cane, I backed it with purple as that will be the base colour of the fabric.

I then started using my drawing to  make the cane (I have always just made it up or followed a tutorial before)

 

I had meant to make the centre of the Paisley a different colour, possibly white. I meant to make the petal cane and then construct 2 different flowers with different backing  but I forgot and only made one flower cane and that was backed with purple - so purple it was... 

Packing in place for main part of cane. It is going to be reduced pretty small to fit on the fork handles so thought the black outline would help. Probably some of these shapes are too small.

   It was a close call with the orange. I ran out of red Kato so couldn't mix any more. Luckily  by using skinner blend logs I had enough. More red ordered and should be here by the weekend!

The cane ready for reduction. But how should I reduce it? I am off to experiment with the different techniques and will report back.

Great links from Doreen

Having posted about Doreen's giveaway on her blog she kindly visited my blog and left some really useful comments. I have decided to post them here so you can all benefit from them too. I only discovered Backyard Beads today and I had a good nose around  but clearly didn't go back far enough as I missed these useful posts.

 

Doreen said...

I have tried all the clays. I like Kato the best! Here are a few resources for color mixing. I've posted on my blog about some of the tools I use

 http://www.shadesofclay.com/more/Images/Colour%20Mixing%20Chart.jpg

http://polymerclay.craftgossip.com/kato-recipes

http://www.shadesofclay.com/more/Color%20Recipes.htm

http://doreenwilley.blogspot.com/2009/05/kato-polyclay-color-mixing-guide.html (expensive, but really handy)

http://doreenwilley.blogspot.com/2009/02/more-about-color-mixing-and-matching.html (I love this!)

Hope this helps :)

 I am writing this whilst sat on a bag of crumbly Kato to try and warm it up to make it less crumbly ;) The 3 in 1 color tool Doreen mentions in the last post is available from amazon.com but not the UK amazon - so typical!

New Color Inspirations Topic

I have made a new topic (see link on right) to show my work from Polymer Clay Color Inspirations by Lindly Haunani and Maggie Maggio. I am just starting out with the exercises  but will update it as I go along. I was inspired to do this after visitng Jeanette Kandray's Clay, Color, Creativity blog .http://jmkandray.com/Blog/ . I really enjoyed reading about her experiences with the exercises so here are mine.