Hi guys, it's Cindy Lietz, your Polymer Clay
Tutor. In today's Studio Tip, I'm going to
show you how to master the blend. Now if
you're just getting into polymer clay
and you're starting to advance, one of
the skills that you may want to add to
your skill set is a gradient blend. Now
I've got examples of what gradient
blends are. In the claying world, we call
this a Skinner Blend because Judith
Skinner was the first one to come up
with this kind of technique. I now do a
much simpler blend called the Teardrop
Blend which I'm going to show you today,
but we use these kind of gradient blends
to show shading and lots of interest in
our clay work. I've got a few examples of
some canes where the teardrop blends
were used in them, here's a peacock cane,
a crocus bead cane, a tulip cane, and a
hyacinth cane. And you can see that the
colors are shifting from one to another,
and it makes for some really cool
techniques. Now a lot of people say, well
what do you do with a skinner blend. Well
you make canes or you make different
kinds of projects, and all of these, I
went to the my drawer just found some
ones that I've had Skinner blends or
teardrop blends in them. So there's lots
of really cool things that you can do
with a gradient blend like this. But
there are some tricks that you can do,
people mess them up on a regular basis,
and I'm going to show you how to fix
that or how to work with it. The blend
that we're going to do today is one
similar to this one here, this is done
using Souffle Clay and I'm just going to
use a tiny amount of three different
coloured clays. I'm going to use Souffle Turnip,
this is Canary, and this one is a Cherry Pie.
I recommend it when you're just
learning how to make a Teardrop Blend or
whatever blend you want to call it,
that you start with small amounts. Doing
large ones and then messing them up just
means that you end up with a lot of
muddy colors. So I always just do small
ones, why not? And then once you get good
at it, then you can start using a larger amounts of clay.
So I'm just going to take my
Canary Clay here and roll it into a ball,
and turn it into a teardrop shape just
by rubbing my two palms together.
Then I'm going to take the Cherry Pie, do the
same thing, and we're going to put these
together in a unique way.
Now you can use...
you'll need some sort of rolling
apparatus to make a Skinner Blend, you
can use an acrylic roller, I have a
video on how to make a teardrop blend
with an acrylic roller, so if you want to
use a roller then you'll want to check
that out, or you can use a pasta machine,
I've got lots of videos on those as well.
But today I'm going to use the Mammoth
Machine because it's in a... it's bigger
and it's got a... you'll be able to see
better if I do use this machine. Besides,
it's my favorite. But a lot of you won't
have this machine but it makes no
difference how or what you put together,
or what rolling machine you use. OK so
I'm going to take these and I'm going to
put... I'm going to put the Turnip one this
way, the Cherry Pie this way, and the
Canary this way. So I'm just going to
flatten them out a little bit and
basically they are three little pointy
triangles next to each other.
And then I'm going to run these through the pasta
machine so I'm going to do it at a
relatively thick setting so that there's
enough room for this to go through. And
I'm going to run it through the machine with...
See how I've got my colors
side-by-side, I'm not going to run it this way,
I'm going to run it this way. OK?
So that my tri... I've got flat parts of
the triangles at the top and it... well you
can see that you've got it alternating this way.
Make sure that that you're
rolling it that way. If you do it the
other way, the colors will mess up so I'm
just going to run it through the pasta
machine here and what I end up is this long snake
of the three colors now this is where a
lot of people mess up.
What I want you to do is to remember to stay in your lane
so keep the colors so that they stay in
their lane when you fold it in half
you're going to need to fold it in half.
If you... if you were to fold it this way,
those colors wouldn't be in their lane,
would they? They would be in each other's
lane but if you go this way, they're in
their lane they're lined up, and they're
going properly in. So I'm going to make
sure to put a little fold at the bottom
and always put the fold into the Machine
first so you're not trapping a lot of air.
Now, what's happened here is these
guys kind of went off to the side,
there's no problem just fold it just
keep it in its lane keep the color in
its way and fold it there it really
doesn't matter, people get too concerned
and too fussed about it, just fold it in half.
It might be easier for you to see it this way. so you're
going to fold it in half, keeping your
colors in their lane, and you can control
them. You can shove them in it, really
doesn't matter that much, you can even
fold it one more time if you're careful
not to trap in any air.
Then you can just run it through the pasta machine over and over,
keeping those colors in their lane.
Now what happens as you get going is if
you have... if your colors are staying too
stripy, so I'm going to do several times
here more, I'll try to go fast so you can
start seeing what's happening.
The colors that are crossing over each other, they
will start squishing together and blending
If your color way is... Here it might be
easier for you to see from the side...
If it's too stripey, then what you're going
to do is you can adjust it a little.
When you fold it in half,
instead of going perfectly in the lane,
you can veer off just a little bit and
doesn't matter whether you go this way
or this way but just veer off just
a little bit so that you're wandering in
your lane a little, and then the colors
will blend better in those areas. Then
you can straighten the back out, so I'm
going to just keep going here. Now what
will happen is if I don't control the width here,
it's just going to get wider
and wider because there's no
restrictions on the side ,
and it's just going to get wider and wider and
eventually what's going to happen is
is that you have this long wide piece
that's starting to get tricky to fold.
So, to avoid that from happening, what you're
going to want to do is to fold it in half
and take it to a surface and just
kind of start pressing the edges in
and control that, push it in so it's a lot
skinnier and clay, you know, that's a
really cool thing about clay is that you
can force it to do what you want it to do.
Also see this little bump that's
sticking out, that's because there's more
clay in that area, it's a little thicker.
So if I press down here make it a little
bit thinner, right where that bump is,
and I just fold it in a bit, what will happen
is, is that'll start straightening itself
out so I've made it a little bit shorter.
Now, instead of letting it just spread
out, I'm going to put my fingers on
either side. Now people make guides and
all kinds of stuff to control the width
but your fingers is just as easy.
So now, see what's happening is it's starting to
square off a bit here and you just keep
going and see how these colors are
starting to blend nicely from one to the... to the next.
And it's starting to get
flatter across the top, you can also
manipulate that a little bit by pulling
up on the edges, it makes for a nicer
blend if these are matching relatively
well at the top.
But it's still not that critical until
you get to the end see how pretty that's
getting? And you just keep going.
Now if I had folded it the wrong way, I just would
have one messy color, probably a muddy
color because I would have had the
purple and the yellow in there so it
would have had all the primaries and it
would have been a messy color like that.
So see how easy that is it's not hard,
you can force it to do what you want it to do.
Another thing you should watch out
for is bubbles. Now I've been pretty good
with not trapping air in there but if
you see any bubbles, what you want to do
is just sort of tug the clay lengthwise
like down the strips and it will release the air out.
I always like to pull this
way rather than sideways so that I'm not
making my blend too wide.
Now, we're getting pretty close here, the... I don't...
I think this hasn't blended nicely enough
yet and I think it's kind of too sharp
so what I would do is just do another
one of those slight tilts to the side so
that it would blend a little more yellow
into the red and a little bit more red
into the yellow
so that line is a little less blurry, I mean a little more blurred
and a little less straight across.
So, as you can see, we did this in real time
we've got a really lovely blend and you
can use these blends for lots and lots
of cool projects, and canes, and all kinds of neat things.
So I hope that answered a
lot of your questions. If you are messing
up your cane, you're probably... or your
blends, you're probably folding them the
wrong way, and you're not keeping those
colors in their lane. Alright, so if
this was helpful for you, do let us know
if you like this video, and if you've got
techniques that you don't quite
understand, you've got products you would
like me to test,
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next time and bye for now.
