Cloisonne type beads

OK, this is what I was leading up to.

You take an 1/8 block of 7 colors of Cernit, violet, blue, light green, yellow, orange, red, and turquoise and you mix it, 1 part to 1 part, with 010 white (porcelain). Mix the clay completely till it is one color. Take a 3/4" ball of each of the colors and roll into a coil that is 3 1/2" by 1/4" in diameter.

Place a small amount of Aztec Gold Pearl-ex powder on to a paper plate and spread out the powder a little to take out the clumps and get a thin coating on the paper plate. Start with one coil and roll the coil into the thin layer of powder until it is completely covered on the outside of the coil. Spread out some more of the powder if you need to. Rub the powder in and the excess off of each coil. Now do this to all of the other colors. I place all of my powder covered coils on to a piece of typing paper.

With a clay blade cut each of the powder covered coils in half and flatten one of the halves in to a teardrop shape.

Here are all of the coils after I have covered them with Aztec Gold Pearl-ex powder. Now wash your hands really well or change gloves if you wear them. Get yourself an old towel to wipe your hands off with later too.

Now mix 1/2 block caramel Cernit with 1/2 block of yellow Cernit till it is one color. Flatten it out with your fingers and roll this out in your pasta machine on the thickest setting, fold the sheet in half to double the thickness, and cut out circles with a round 1/2" cutter. Roll the 1/2" ones into balls and set them aside. Using the 2nd cutter (middle one) from a Makin's Clay 3 piece round cutter set, cut out some of those, roll those in to balls and then roll them in to teardrops. Flatten the teardrops until they are about 1/4" thick.

Now take the little coils and slice off 1/16" to 1/8" thick slices of the colored powder covered coils with a clay blade. Put the slices on the ochre colored balls and teardrops to form images or patterns. Press the slices gently into place on the balls and teardrops. Wipe your hands every so often to take off the excess powder. I do not like to over lap the slices, but sometimes it might work out that way. But mostly it is one level of slices on the beads.

Here is a tray of beads ready to go into the oven.

You just never know, I might even make something out of these.

Yellow Ochre

Ochre or Ocher (pronounced /'əʊ.kə(r)/, from the Greek ὠχρός, yellow) is a color, usually described as golden-yellow or light yellow brown.

This is the definition from wikipedia

This is the mixture in Cernit.

This and the last post are also leading up to something.

Notice the "not conditioned" Caramel.

This was broken off the block flattened a little and run through the pasta machine on the thickest setting.

Because Cernit has a porcelain effect you can view what happens in all Polymer clay when it is not conditioned. ALL polymer clay should be conditioned, no matter how soft it is.

Cernit is very strong and this piece is very durable and it might even be featured in some way through someone's work, but you can not do this with all clays.

Conditioning gives you the best results possible for your clay of choice.