Teardrop Blend Shift – Colorway Gradient Variations

00:00:03 –> 00:00:08 Hi guys, it’s Cindy Lietz, your Polymer Clay Tutor and today’s Studio Tip, I’m going to show

00:00:08 –> 00:00:13 you how you can get more contrast in your polymer clay Skinner Blends.

00:00:13 –> 00:00:19 Now, if you’re not familiar with what a Skinner Blend is, that is a color blend where you

00:00:19 –> 00:00:27 can take more than one color of polymer clay and then you blend it into a gradient sheet

00:00:27 –> 00:00:33 or an ombre kind of technique like this where you have one color shift to another color.

00:00:33 –> 00:00:40 Now, you can do this with more than one color, I mean more than two colors too, if you want

00:00:40 –> 00:00:44 but there’s a lot of cool things that can be done with a Skinner Blend.

00:00:44 –> 00:00:50 In fact, I was going to this week teach you how to make one of these Zipper Canes that

00:00:50 –> 00:00:58 uses Skinner Blends but during the process of making the samples, I realized that a lot

00:00:58 –> 00:01:05 of you may not understand how to get enough contrast in your Color Blends so that you

00:01:05 –> 00:01:07 can get the proper effect.

00:01:07 –> 00:01:15 Now, I’m –now I’m just going to show you the samples that I have here, I have these

00:01:15 –> 00:01:21 Zipper Canes that are done in several different colorways but if you carefully look at the

00:01:21 –> 00:01:28 different patterns here that we’ve got, you’ll be able to see that the– the canes that have

00:01:28 –> 00:01:30 the most contrast in color.

00:01:30 –> 00:01:39 So they go from the darkest to the lightest will have the the best effect in showing this

00:01:39 –> 00:01:44 Zipper Cane effect so the way the Zipper Cane is made is you make a blend then you chop

00:01:44 –> 00:01:47 it up and you flip it back and forth and do these different things with it which I’ll

00:01:47 –> 00:01:53 show you next week but if you have a blend that has a lot of contrast.

00:01:53 –> 00:02:00 So, from from the dark to the white here, you will get a cool effect but if you have

00:02:00 –> 00:02:05 the colors are too similar to each other, like in this case we’ve gotta blend from a

00:02:05 –> 00:02:09 Cadmium Red to kind of a Pearly Pink color.

00:02:09 –> 00:02:14 Here, the colors are too close and value so they’re both medium colors there neither or

00:02:14 –> 00:02:23 light and so beside each other even though the effect is kind of cool, it loses the drama

00:02:23 –> 00:02:28 to it because it’s– the colors are too similar and especially from far away, or if you do

00:02:28 –> 00:02:32 reduce this cane you would start losing the pattern visually.

00:02:32 –> 00:02:36 I mean the pattern’s there but you just can’t see it as well because the colors are blending

00:02:36 –> 00:02:38 with your eyes.

00:02:38 –> 00:02:49 So, the easiest way to get a really obvious contrast between two colors is to use a dark

00:02:49 –> 00:02:57 color like I’ve got here this is a Ultramarine Blue and then White, so White is White and

00:02:57 –> 00:03:02 these are both Premo colors but you know, there’s a lot more blends than just from color

00:03:02 –> 00:03:06 to white and I mean this is what most people will show you when they’re talking about a

00:03:06 –> 00:03:13 Skinner Blend is they’ll show you, you know, from a color to White and so what will happen

00:03:13 –> 00:03:18 is you’ll go and you think well I don’t want to just do White– White and colored one I

00:03:18 –> 00:03:23 want to do two colors that I really love so you pick something like these two colors here.

00:03:23 –> 00:03:27 Now, these are the two new colors from Premo.

00:03:27 –> 00:03:34 They are what is this one this one is Periwinkle and this is Wisteria and they’re both very

00:03:34 –> 00:03:40 pretty colors but if you blend them together into a Skinner Blend or a Teardrop Blend,

00:03:40 –> 00:03:44 which is my method of doing it which is much easier and I’ll show you that in up I’ll show

00:03:44 –> 00:03:47 you how it goes in a second.

00:03:47 –> 00:03:53 If you blend those two colors together and into a gradient like this, because these are

00:03:53 –> 00:04:02 equal value, they’re both medium colors, the blend is very pretty but it’s not going to

00:04:02 –> 00:04:07 work very well for a zipper cane because the contrast isn’t that high and you can really–

00:04:07 –> 00:04:11 you can test out your blends to see if there’s much contrast if you’re not seeing it here

00:04:11 –> 00:04:17 by just putting the two ends together and then if you kind of squint your eyes if the

00:04:17 –> 00:04:21 color sort of melt together then and there’s no contrast there.

00:04:21 –> 00:04:27 If I put the this blend here, for example, next to each other, and I squint my eyes,

00:04:27 –> 00:04:35 I can still see that there’s a big difference between light and dark but say you’ve done

00:04:35 –> 00:04:39 this blend you think it’s really pretty, you still want to use it you don’t have to throw it away

00:04:39 –> 00:04:43 What you can do is you can amp it up.

00:04:43 –> 00:04:46 Now, it’s very simple to do.

00:04:46 –> 00:04:50 So, this –the way the Teardrop Blend works and like I said, you’re going to have to go

00:04:50 –> 00:04:55 watch the video the Teardrop Blend Video but to take your color of clay, you shape it into

00:04:55 –> 00:05:03 a teardrop, so I’ve got the the Periwinkle and the Wisteria shaped into teardrops you

00:05:03 –> 00:05:09 set them opposite each other and they become the shape of a triangle and then you run them

00:05:09 –> 00:05:12 through the Pasta Machine like this.

00:05:12 –> 00:05:17 Now, if you don’t have a Pasta Machine, you can use an Acrylic Roller, I also have a video

00:05:17 –> 00:05:22 for that it takes a lot longer to do but it is possible.

00:05:22 –> 00:05:29 So you fold it in half and you keep running it through the machine until you get a blend

00:05:29 –> 00:05:34 oh and this one you can just tuck back in there, there’s no big worries about that and

00:05:34 –> 00:05:41 you just keep blending over and over and over and it takes quite a few passes and the colors

00:05:41 –> 00:05:45 will, and you can see here it’s just starting to blend in the middle but the colors will

00:05:45 –> 00:05:49 eventually blend into a smooth blend.

00:05:49 –> 00:05:55 Now, so I’ve done that here already just to save us some time but like I said we can amp it up.

00:05:55 –> 00:06:01 We can either darken the dark or we can lighten the light so I’m going to look at my blend

00:06:01 –> 00:06:05 here and choose which one is the lightest this purple-y color is the lightest one of

00:06:05 –> 00:06:12 the two and I’m just going to take some white and it could be Pearl it could be some other

00:06:12 –> 00:06:21 super light color but White is going to work quite well and I’m just going to stick it on top

00:06:21 –> 00:06:26 I could– if I wanted to go the other way and darken up this other end I could stick

00:06:26 –> 00:06:27 a dark color onto here.

00:06:27 –> 00:06:33 it would have to be one that would blend nicely with that Blue then what I’m going to do is

00:06:33 –> 00:06:41 just run this through the Pasta Machine and fold it in half and keep running it through

00:06:41 –> 00:06:44 until those colors blend together.

00:06:44 –> 00:06:48 Now, see this guy is all acting out of control.

00:06:48 –> 00:06:55 That’s no big deal, I think people get too worried about this kind of thing you can always

00:06:55 –> 00:07:02 just tuck that back in and it will start working its way into your blend really quite easily.

00:07:02 –> 00:07:09 You can be a little bit more– less worried and more– just force that clay to do it what

00:07:09 –> 00:07:12 you want it to do it.

00:07:12 –> 00:07:17 There’s another clay out there that says you’re the boss of the clay or something like that.

00:07:17 –> 00:07:18 It’s great, cute.

00:07:18 –> 00:07:25 OK, so as you can see as I keep blending this is going to end up lightening up and bringing

00:07:25 –> 00:07:28 the contrast up of those colors.

00:07:28 –> 00:07:33 Now, we don’t have a lot of time because it takes several passes to go through but if

00:07:33 –> 00:07:39 I was to continue to blend, I would get more even blend like this and you would have much

00:07:39 –> 00:07:42 more contrast here to the end color.

00:07:42 –> 00:07:44 See that now?

00:07:44 –> 00:07:51 So that if I want to use this in a cane like this with a Zipper Cane, I’m going to get

00:07:51 –> 00:07:54 a much more effective design.

00:07:54 –> 00:08:00 Now, there are lots of different things you can do if– if for example, you didn’t have

00:08:00 –> 00:08:05 quite enough white you could always throw on just another little strip of white on the end.

00:08:05 –> 00:08:08 Now, I did something very similar to this one here.

00:08:08 –> 00:08:16 I had a blend of Gold to Silver the there wasn’t enough contrast in the color so I threw

00:08:16 –> 00:08:22 a little White on the end and I threw a little bronze on this end and I ended up with a cane

00:08:22 –> 00:08:25 that had some nice contrast.

00:08:25 –> 00:08:31 Now, this is a really fun and easy cane, I will show you how to do that next week.

00:08:31 –> 00:08:37 And go ahead and start trying to do blends, do little tiny batches if you want and you’re

00:08:37 –> 00:08:42 going to end up start– you’ll start understanding how the blends work.

00:08:42 –> 00:08:47 You can always throw in a little more color to boost it up and get a little more contrast

00:08:47 –> 00:08:54 and I hope that was helpful for you, that you learned something from this and if you

00:08:54 –> 00:09:01 did like this video do let us know and if you’ve got suggestions for future videos,

00:09:01 –> 00:09:05 techniques that you’d like to learn, products you liked us to test and you haven’t seen

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00:09:10 –> 00:09:14 We do have a ton of video so make sure to search through those and see if you can find

00:09:14 –> 00:09:15 what you need there.

00:09:15 –> 00:09:18 Alrighty, so we’ll see you next week and bye for now.

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