Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Ick!!! Week 24 of canes


I have to immediately start this entry with apologies to Lindly Haunani and Maggie Maggio, this atrocity is in no way related to their talent and skills as book writers. The fault is all mine.

I've been playing with their wonderful book, Polymer Clay Colour Inspirations and thought I would do an entry on one of their necklaces. It uses a three colour skinner blend cane. Right from the start of my colour choices I knew this was going to be trouble. It would help if I really worked through the exercises each in sequence, but I started having problems with the collage portion of the exercise.

I love jewel tones: ruby reds, emerald greens, cobalt and indigo blues and deep almost golden yellows. Unfortunately, I can never seem to make them work together in polymer clay. I suspect a lot of that has to do with the lack of a good Kato cool red (Kato, are you listening? This is by far my biggest wish in clay. Your red concentrate is a nice cool red - please make that in big blocks).

But I thought I would try it one more time for the necklace. A nice deep blue, a golden yellow, and a red as nice as I could make it. Unfortunately the blue and red together make a bit of mud, though more purple than I was expecting. But the jewel tones are very muted and the blend wasn't as nice as I had hoped for at all.

Putting together the necklace is tedious, and about halfway through shaping the petals, I realized that I wasn't going to have the patience to complete the task. So I thought a mosaic might be nice, perhaps something around a nice centre piece, maybe sun like or something. But, I didn't have a nice centre piece so I thought I would do the outside first and perhaps fill in the centre piece.

Here's the result. Ick. It looks like a macaroni diorama that a 6 year old would put together. Ick.

So, I may keep this as a reminder of what not to do, or, I may be brave and just throw it out. I'm pretty sure this is beyond redemption and really, there are a lot of other projects that I'd like to tackle.

I almost didn't post this, I'm so embarrassed about it. But, for those of you that might tackle the necklace, you may wish to know what colours to stay away from. At least with Kato. Surfingcat Cara did a great job with her necklace. You can see it here.

Cheers,

Sandy

5 comments:

Kate said...

I was glad to see this post. I have been thinking about tackling this necklace myself eventually so I loved hearing your thoughts.

I am not sure if I am reading your thought correctly but I get 12.5oz blocks of Kato red from www.clayalley.com...if it's the quantity you are after?

Anyway, thanks again for putting this out there!

Sandy said...

Hi Kate,

I have Kato red, but it's a warm red, and for some of my colour choices I would really like a cool red. The magenta kinda works sometimes. There's quite a difference between the red colour on the bulk block and the red colour on the Kato concentrate. The Kato concentrate colour is perfect for the cool red.

I'm sure your necklace will come out way better - I'd love to hear about it when you complete it.

Sandy

2 Good Claymates said...

I agree with you Sandy about the Kato Red -- I've achieved some nicer reds by mixing it with pearl and magenta. As a matter of fact I mix in a little pearl with many of the Kato colors which not only dilutes it a bit but adds a little shimmer.

I dislike the Kato yellow color the most -- it is extremely weak and you have to use so much as it get easily overpowered when mixing in with other colors so I usually add some gold as well.

I like the Kato clay but personally I love the Premo colors better so I follow a lot of the recipes from Shades of Clay to mix similar Premo colors.

Cara Jane (surfingcat) said...

Thanks for your link to my necklace, I was surprised how well it turned out.

Your beads look bigger than mine, I reduced mine quite small cause I didn't use that much clay to start with.

Did you use the black to white blend as a centre? Looks more dull than that to me in your photo.

I nearly used a red for mine but went for the magenta in the end ,glad I did as it looks like it makes brighter colours when mixed.

Using it as a mosiac is a neat idea, I think you should!

Unknown said...

I feel your pain - I struggled getting through all those petals and was ready to give up - DON'T!! just do a bit at a time, it is well worth the effort, and what looks really bad before stringing somehow gets transformed when strung. I agree with surfingcat - I made my petals much smaller as well - I think i ended up with 230 or so. From what i see on your picture, I think it would be a lovely piece for autumn - it has the "fall feel" to it. Also, when I made mine, I did not wrap in black and made the inner piece with a skinner blend of white and yellow- which worked well with the colors I used.