An Easier Way To Do Polymer Clay Mica Shifts
Video #642: Most everyone says to bend the blade while shaving your shifts… not me! Instead… try bending the clay!
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IN THIS POST: — mica shift — mica particles — metallics — metallic clay — pearls — pearl clay — mica particle alignment — pasta machine — cutting blade — textures — texture sheets — stamps — texture plates — premo accents — premo — sculpey — polyform — (Topics marked with an asterisk* are discussed in the Comments Section below).
Topics Covered In This Video:
- A little while ago, I did a video on How Mica Shifts Work With Metallic Pearlescent Polymer Clay. The link to that video is posted just below the video in today’s post.
- What we talked about in that video was how the little shiny particles in the metallic clays and the pearl clays, will have a certain behavior according to how they are aligned.
- If you haven’t seen that video, be sure to go check it out because it is really helpful to understand how the whole mica shift process actually works.
- One of the really cool things you can do with metallic clays is manipulated those mica particles so that they look dimensional, even if the surface of your clay is glassy smooth.
- I show some examples of mica shift jewelry I have made in the past.
- In order to do this technique, you will need to use a metallic or pearl clay.
- I use Premo Accents metallics and pearl clays because of their high mica content.
- I demo how to align the particles in the clay and get it ready for texturing.
- The demo continues using a Sculpey Texture Sheet for adding the pattern into the clay.
- The raised areas of the textured sheet are then sliced off very thinly.
- One trick for easily shaving off the top layer of clay off is to stick your sheet to a rounded surface such as a bottle or jar.
- So instead of bending your blade to shave your mica shift sheets… you bend your clay.
- Make sure not to cut deeper than the deepest area of the stamp.
- Once all the top layer has been removed, you can smooth the sheet out by running it through your pasta machine, starting at the setting you rolled the original sheet with… and then dialing down one setting at a time until the surface is smooth.
- This mica shift sheet can then be layered onto other clay or projects to make pendants, beads, decor items, or whatever you want.
- This technique benefits greatly by a good sanding and buffing after baking to bring out the rich sparkle, depth and shine
00:00:03 –> 00:00:08 Hi guys, its Cindy Lietz, your Polymer Clay Tutor, and today’s PcT Mini Tute, I’m gonna
00:00:08 –> 00:00:11 show you how to do the Mica Shift technique.
00:00:11 –> 00:00:19 Now a little while ago I did a video all about Mica and how it works in the metallic and
00:00:19 –> 00:00:27 pearl clays, you can see the article there… or the video there, and what we talked about
00:00:27 –> 00:00:36 was how the little shiny particles in the metallic clays and the pearl clays will have
00:00:36 –> 00:00:40 a certain behavior according to how they are aligned, and if you haven’t seen that video,
00:00:40 –> 00:00:45 you should go make sure to check that out, because it really will help you understand
00:00:45 –> 00:00:46 this whole process.
00:00:46 –> 00:00:52 But one of the really cool things that you can do is you can move those Mica particles
00:00:52 –> 00:00:58 and manipulate them, and get them to look dimensional, even if they’re completely flat,
00:00:58 –> 00:01:02 and let me just show you some examples so that it makes some sense to you, alright?
00:01:02 –> 00:01:09 First of all, I’ll show you a sheet of clay that I’ve done the Mica Shift technique to,
00:01:09 –> 00:01:15 and this one has a snake skin pattern on it, and it looks very dimensional, but if you
00:01:15 –> 00:01:22 look at it from the side, it’s actually completely smooth, and that’s because we’ve moved the
00:01:22 –> 00:01:26 Mica particles in the clay to the side, trimmed it and did a few things which I’ll show you
00:01:26 –> 00:01:28 in a second.
00:01:28 –> 00:01:31 And here’s a few pieces of jewelry made…
00:01:31 –> 00:01:39 I looked for some more but I couldn’t find them in my stuff, but here is some Hollow
00:01:39 –> 00:01:47 beads that I made using the Mica shift technique, and this is just Gold clay that has been cut
00:01:47 –> 00:01:50 and put together.
00:01:50 –> 00:01:57 And on…here’s a couple of other pieces, this is from the…oh what is it, the Mermaid
00:01:57 –> 00:02:03 Scales Technique tutorial that I did a long time ago, but this is where I’ve done a Skinner
00:02:03 –> 00:02:10 blend using a couple of different colors of Pearl clay and then manipulated the layers
00:02:10 –> 00:02:15 and trimmed them and then polished them up and stuff, and it looks very cool.
00:02:15 –> 00:02:21 And then here’s a double sided bead here where I’ve done the technique in 2 different colors,
00:02:21 –> 00:02:26 kind of an Olive-y color, and then a Purple color.
00:02:26 –> 00:02:34 Now the types of clay that you’re gonna need to use is a Metallic or Pearl clay, I used
00:02:34 –> 00:02:40 Premo! because Premo! has the highest Mica content in it of the different brands and
00:02:40 –> 00:02:48 you get the best effect from it, you can use Silver, Gold, Bronze, Copper, there’s a really
00:02:48 –> 00:02:54 cool Peacock Pearl color, there’s a Light Green Pearl or Bright Green Pearl…I always
00:02:54 –> 00:03:00 get that wrong…Bright Green Pearl, and there’s a few others that you can use that are really
00:03:00 –> 00:03:06 cool for that, I’m gonna use a color called Purple Pearl, and …just because we haven’t
00:03:06 –> 00:03:10 use it yet here, and I’m gonna run it through the pasta machine.
00:03:10 –> 00:03:17 Now, I’ve talked about… in that other video I was referring to, it’s important that
00:03:17 –> 00:03:24 you run your Pearls and Metallics through the pasta machine over and over by folding
00:03:24 –> 00:03:29 it in half and running it through, doesn’t matter if you put it in this way, so with
00:03:29 –> 00:03:40 the fold to the side, or with the fold to the bottom, but you need to just keep layering…or
00:03:40 –> 00:03:44 folding it and running it through until all the particles start laying flat, and you can
00:03:44 –> 00:03:51 tell it’s ready to go when you get quite an even sheen to the piece.
00:03:51 –> 00:03:56 If it’s all mottled…on the backside here it will be a little mottled, you’ll be able
00:03:56 –> 00:04:03 to see different colors and streaks and marbling and stuff, so this top side is good to go,
00:04:03 –> 00:04:09 so we’ll just start there, and you need some sort of texture, you can either use like a
00:04:09 –> 00:04:16 texture sheet, like these ones from Sculpey, or you can use a rubber stamp or you can even
00:04:16 –> 00:04:18 press objects into it.
00:04:18 –> 00:04:24 But what we wanna do is we wanna press those shiny Mica particles into the surface of the
00:04:24 –> 00:04:30 clay and distort the other ones, so I’m just gonna put a little bit of water… spritz
00:04:30 –> 00:04:37 some water on this texture stamp so it doesn’t get too stuck in the clay, and this one happens
00:04:37 –> 00:04:42 to be a snake pattern, whatever pattern you want will work great, and we just wanna press
00:04:42 –> 00:04:50 it as deeply into the clay as you can, and with these particular texture sheets, you
00:04:50 –> 00:04:56 can tell if you’ve pressed it well when it starts to get dark, ‘cause you can see
00:04:56 –> 00:05:03 through the clay, so I’m just gonna really press down hard, and make sure that it’s really
00:05:03 –> 00:05:10 impressed, embossed, whatever you wanna call, it into that clay.
00:05:10 –> 00:05:21 Then what you’ve got is a sheet of clay with all of your texture on it, and now, a lot
00:05:21 –> 00:05:26 of people will…when they…okay, the next thing we have to do is we have to shave off
00:05:26 –> 00:05:33 the top layer and that will expose some of the Mica…you’ll see in a sec, but a lot
00:05:33 –> 00:05:37 of people they’ll…they’ll show you how to do it by just scraping your blade across
00:05:37 –> 00:05:43 this way, but it’s very difficult not to gouge into your piece and cut deeper than you should,
00:05:43 –> 00:05:47 so here’s a really easy little trick.
00:05:47 –> 00:05:53 And you need a round surface, it doesn’t matter, I’m just gonna use my rubbing alcohol jar…or
00:05:53 –> 00:05:59 bottle here, and it makes it so that it’s real easy to slice through the top layer,
00:05:59 –> 00:06:04 and what you wanna do… and you can do this at the table or holding it, you wanna cut
00:06:04 –> 00:06:14 only the top raised surface, and then leave…cut right down to where the bottom of those little
00:06:14 –> 00:06:18 dents are, so maybe from this angle it’ll be easiest to show you, but if I just cut
00:06:18 –> 00:06:25 the top layer off, and you can see I’m gonna end up with kind of a little lacy thing happening
00:06:25 –> 00:06:33 here, you cut down to the bottom of the…where you stamped to, but you don’t wanna cut any
00:06:33 –> 00:06:42 deeper than that, and you can just cut along, taking little swipes at it, until you’ve
00:06:42 –> 00:06:44 removed just the top layer.
00:06:44 –> 00:06:51 Now this takes practice of course, like everything does, but you’ll find that this is a lot easier
00:06:51 –> 00:06:58 if you have it on a rounded surface, ‘cause then you’re not having to gouge into it, so
00:06:58 –> 00:07:04 I’m just gonna go around and remove just the top layer.
00:07:04 –> 00:07:11 Now we can perfect this and make it even smoother by running it through the pasta machine in
00:07:11 –> 00:07:17 a minute, so I’m just gonna cut this along the surface, you’ll be really surprised how
00:07:17 –> 00:07:28 cool this turns out, and you can use all kinds of things like I said, stamps and things,
00:07:28 –> 00:07:34 you can press words in with word stamps, it’s a very neat technique.
00:07:34 –> 00:07:40 And also, because it works with any of the Metallics or Pearls, you can mix your own
00:07:40 –> 00:07:45 colors together and come up with your own custom colors, you don’t just have to use
00:07:45 –> 00:07:52 them out of the pack, you can do teardrop blends and Skinner blends with the different
00:07:52 –> 00:07:59 Metallics, and you can get your own custom look, it’s very cool.
00:07:59 –> 00:08:07 So you have to go around the whole thing and just remove that top layer…maybe I should
00:08:07 –> 00:08:11 have got a smaller piece, so it wouldn’t take me so long, alright, so I’m just about
00:08:11 –> 00:08:12 there.
00:08:12 –> 00:08:16 And the nice thing also about having a bottle, it can fall…all these little pieces can
00:08:16 –> 00:08:24 fall down below and they don’t have to get all stuck on your piece again.
00:08:24 –> 00:08:33 I would be a little pickier, but I’m running out of time here, so what I’m gonna do next
00:08:33 –> 00:08:39 is that’s…it’s not perfect but it’ll do, and I’ll show you what we can do next, is
00:08:39 –> 00:08:48 we can run it through the pasta machine at the same setting it was last at, so we’ll
00:08:48 –> 00:08:55 start like this, and this will smooth off the layers on the top, and we’ll run it through
00:08:55 –> 00:09:04 at another setting down, and you’re going to see very quickly…yeah, we’re almost there,
00:09:04 –> 00:09:11 there’s still a couple of little scrape marks, but you can see the pattern is all still there,
00:09:11 –> 00:09:17 but it’s actually totally smooth, I’ll do it one more time, and you can change directions
00:09:17 –> 00:09:24 so you’re not distorting your pattern too much, see how cool that is?
00:09:24 –> 00:09:30 So even though this is just silky smooth, you’ve got the dimension of that snake skin
00:09:30 –> 00:09:35 there, and there’s a lot of… you can make cool beads, cut them out into neat pendants,
00:09:35 –> 00:09:38 all kinds of cool projects you can use with that.
00:09:38 –> 00:09:45 This technique also responds very well to sanding and buffing, like I did with my pieces
00:09:45 –> 00:09:51 here, they really need that sanding and buffing to make… after they’re baked of course,
00:09:51 –> 00:09:55 you can’t sand them when they’re raw, but after they’re baked… and I’ve got
00:09:55 –> 00:10:00 videos of sanding and buffing and stuff as well, but it just brings out that metallic
00:10:00 –> 00:10:08 shine and the depth, and all the cool dimension that you get from this neat technique.
00:10:08 –> 00:10:14 So I hope you enjoyed that, if you like this video, do let us know.
00:10:14 –> 00:10:20 And if you have any questions about Polymer Clay, there’s a chance that we have already
00:10:20 –> 00:10:26 done a video on it, so you wanna make sure to search through our site and our channel
00:10:26 –> 00:10:35 to see if we might have already done a video on whatever it is that you need to learn about,
00:10:35 –> 00:10:41 if not, then make sure to leave a suggestion in the comment section below and we can make
00:10:41 –> 00:10:43 a video on it.
00:10:43 –> 00:10:46 Alright, so we’ll see you next time and bye for now.
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Resource Links:
- Related Video: How Mica Shifts Work With Metallic Pearlescent Polymer Clay
- Related Video: Polymer Clay Tutorial Mica Shift Technique
- Related Video: Mica Shift Mermaid Scales Polymer Clay Tutorial
- Related Video: Reptile Hollow Lentil Bead Polymer Clay Tutorial
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- Amazon: Polymer Clay Blades **
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Another great tute, Cindy!!!
Me too, Peggy. It is so much easier. I’ve also found I can pop the bottle/clay into a plastic bag and store it for long periods of time. Which sure helps because when I do mica shift, I DO mica shift, lol.
I’ve been doing it this way for a long time and I am 99.9% sure you shared this with us a long time ago either in a tutorial or here on the blog. Tried to locate it with the search but no luck. Much easier to shave off layers when you lay you clay on a round jar. I have a big ol pickle jar I got from a friend. Love and use it when I am working with this technique. Thanks for sharing it with us again Cindy.
Hi Peggy… here is the link to the original Mica Shift Tutorial where Cindy demonstrated that rounded surface mica shaving technique.
Mica Shift Video (Nov 16, 2009)
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Hi Doug, thanks for your help and support. I dedicate my mermaid poem to you. You photo inspired me….cheers..xx
Glad to hear that the issue you were having with accessing the site has been resolved. Thanks for the “dedication” … your poems add so much value to the community here.
By the way… I think I saw that mermaid way off in the distance, perched on a rock sticking up above the high water line. Hopefully she didn’t take me for some slimy gent so intent on photographing the ladies discarded items of clothing. My intentions were entirely honorable.
Using the alcohol bottle was a great tip ! It really makes it so much easier to slice just the top, thanks :-)
Love this!!! As I watched Cindy wrap that sheet of clay around the bottle, I just went wow, why didn’t I think of that.
To be able to teach this old dog a new trick is wondrous, and this trick one of your best. Keep on teaching so I can keep on learning. THANKS!
Well, damn. That’s super smart! Flexing the blade always makes me a little nervous anyway. SMART! Thanks!
thanks for that great and easy way to do the mica shift. I love working with the pearlized clsy.. It gives a greater dimension to my work. Thanks again to you and Doug for expanding our horizon in the use of PC
Great tutorial Cindy! I never thought of using a round item to help with the shift. Thank you for the idea :)
I have tried doing mica shift for years and always failed when shaving it. The bottle tip is amazing!!! Thank you.
I agree with Dixie Ann; it’s a great tip. I love the mica shift technique and have been using your bottle technique since I watched your first demonstration. It makes it so much easier to avoid those gouges. Thanks!
Cindy that was such a cool way to create a Mica shift sheet. I am so glad you made a video of how to slice off the top clay. I made a bead similar to your oval purple one a long time ago but had forgotten about wrapping the clay around a bottle. That in itself is so worth watching the video. You are such a Gem. Happiest of Easter to you and the family. The Lord has certainly blessed you all with such talent.
Thank you Dixie Ann! Happy Easter to you too!