Nature is the best artist

When I am looking for inspiration for color palettes, I go to my yard.

This is a Special Cactus; it was given to me by my friends, Irene and Lee before they moved to Kansas.

I miss them dearly! It is one of those things that we all do, get close right before someone moves. Or when they get sick…or before they die.
Note to myself, “live and love now, no regrets later”.
Anyhow, they lived near the beach, I don’t. I knew the cactus would like it here, cacti like it hot.
It is coloring up very nicely. Now it is flowering.
It was just as beautiful at their house but a lot lighter.
It reminds me of good times and good friends and it has a great color palette to play with. Don’t you agree?

Piñata ink and translucent clays

You probably already know this, but the Cernit colors, Opaque white, Pearl white, Porcelain White, Biscuit, Nightglow, Granite, Champagne, and Translucent can be tinted or colored with the Piñata inks. So in reality you could buy just a couple of colors of Cernit and have your self a virtual field day if you already have the Piñata inks and some of you might. The inks can be used on paper, leather, glass, tile, silk, cotton, organza, lace, and some plastics. This is a very versatile product and definitely one I carry in my tool box.

The blue in this flower cane is Baja Blue Piñata ink tinted Pearl Cernit. The background is the plain porcelain white. The color you see in it is a color core and then the cane slices are added to it. I like the frosted appearance.

Baja Blue and Senorita Margarita make a great purple. One drop of each color should do it.

It doesn’t take much of the ink at all. They are somewhat translucent themselves and quite intense in color. If you are out of the USA you can not get them from us www.clayfactory.net, you have to find them locally, go to www.Jacquardproducts.com they have a product finder there under each product or you can call or write them.

You want to condition your clay. With Cernit it is important to thoroughly condition the clay. I condition and flatten a piece about 1/8 of a small block with my fingers and then I put a drop of Piñata on the clay and let it dry on the clay.

With Sunbright Yellow and Tangerine will probably need a couple of drops. Now when I say one or two, I mean one or two, the Piñata ink is very strong.

With the Opaque white you will get more pastely colors and with the porcelain white they are almost like frosted glass that is colored. With the translucent they will be more intense in color or the strength of the color. They may also look very light before baking and will darken up some after baking.

Put on a pair gloves and condition the ink color in to the clay.

With the reds and the pinks they will migrate in to other colors of clay when the clay is unbaked.

So make the colors and if you are using the reds and the pinks, make your canes small and bake your work right away.

I like that I can use this to make a ton of different pearl colors too and the nightglow is a blast with the Piñata because it still glows even when using a dark ink like the sapphire blue. YAY!!!

The ink is also fun to use by applying it directly to a bead that you have already formed to color the bead. I used this method in my Inkling beads.

There is a link to that and the Piñata Ink Flowers and leaves here.

Here is the URL,

http://mariesegal.blogspot.com/2008/12/another-project.html

This is another project called Glowing Night Lights here.

and the URL

http://www.jacquardproducts.com/support/projects/proj0005/

Tinting Granite

Tinting Granite... sounds like a new band name!!

Granite Cernit is wonderful color of clay and it can be tinted to so many different colors. All of the Nature colors are fabulous dahling, but Granite is sublime.

Here is the Basalt and because it is green, it is naturally a favorite of mine.

Cernit is a wonderful clay to make silverware with because of the hard and dense surface after baking. I also used Black Ne-opaque acrylic paint as an "antiquing medium" for the top handle in granite and Brown for the handles in Basalt color.

Rubber stamps courtesy of http://www.rubberstampplantation.com/ Thanks Deb!!!

And for what is so cool about the color Granite...

One clay, oh so many choices!!! There are just 7 here. The possibilities are infinite. This formulation is 1 part Granite and 1/4 part color Cernit of choice. These colors remind me of that wonderful 50's floor tile.

Because of the nature of the Nature colors, they are better for this type of application. For caning, layered stacks, mokume gane, and millefiori techniques you are better off starting with the Opaque white and mixing in embossing powders for that. Anytime you are cutting cross sections of the clay, the fibers and particles in the Nature colors will load up on the blade and sometimes drag across the surface or face of the image. Opaque white Cernit with black, gray, and gold embossing powder will give you a similar look. Some places even have Granite embossing powder with a varied mix of powders sold as the color. You can tint that too!!! OMG!!! I love oven-bake polymer clay!

Do you have some crummy silverware that needs a face lift? Wouldn't this make a wonderful gift? Bought my silverware at Smart and Final.

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.

Mixing with 010 or what I call the porcelain white Cernit

When you want to have the color of Cernit (the new formulation) more intense, brighter, and a little lighter after baking (they will darken quite a bit, nature of the clay and it's porcelain effect) and more like the package color that you see. I like to mix it with the 010 white. This is kind of confusing but awesome once I get adjusted to their way of thinking. The Cernit company’s clays are meant to look like porcelain clay and they have a porcelain look to them. It is very close to using a translucent clay. The more I work with this feature instead of fighting it, the better my work looks in it (imho). I will sometimes take a color, say yellow and mix it with a small amount of opaque white 029 and then leave some not mixed with anything and then mix some of the yellow one to one with the porcelain white 010, now I have 3 variations of the same color and when baked they all work together (after all, they are the same color, wonderful for those of you that think you don't know how or are afraid to mix colors), but I have a variation of the same color for a more dramatic effect, as in the flames of the goblet above. Here is another view of the yellows. I have used more than one yellow color and its variations in the flowers though.

Here is an example of a rainbow of colors mixed one to one with the porcelain white 010 or what they just call white.
It is a little hard to distinguish from this photo but you can see the darkening that takes place when you remember that I mixed them in equal parts with what they call white.
This also means that if you want to have the regular colors be opaque you will have to mix all of the colors with a little of the opaque white 029 or with this clay the lines between the colors in the image cane (even though straight and perfect) will appear to be wispy and unclear. The light plays all the way through the clay like frosted glass in this instance.
Or another way to make fabulous canes, because this new formulation of Cernit canes wonderfully well and slices oh so well, is to outline all of the colors with an opaque color or a very dark color, in this way you are isolating the colors or components of the cane which to me will stop the wispy lines, those crooked lines are made by me not the clay. I do this anyway when I cane so it seems very natural to me. The outside packing of this cane is the porcelain white 010 and Biscuit mixed together.