Understanding Mica Shifts – Metallic/Pearl Polymer Clay
Video #630: It all has to do with how the tiny mica particles in the clay are aligned… and how they reflect the light.
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IN THIS POST: — mica — mica shift — pearl — pearl clay — mica powder — metallic — pearlescent — pearl — mica particles — mokume gane — premo accents — gold — reflecting light — rubber stamps — stamping — stamped patterns — checkerboard pattern — marbled — (Topics marked with an asterisk* are discussed in the Comments Section below).
Topics Covered In This Video:
The Magic of Mica – Understanding the Secrets of Metallic and Pearl Polymer Clays.
There are some very sparkly, metallic and pearl polymer clays out there… Premo Accents are particularly beautiful because of their high mica particle content.
They come in all kinds of different colors. Premo has the following metallic and pearl colors: Gold, 18K Gold, Antique Gold, Copper, Bronze, Silver, Pearl, Bright Green Pearl, Magenta Pearl, Purple Pearl, Peacock Pearl and Blue Pearl.
There are some things that you need to understand about these Metallic and Pearl Clays.
Often called mica clay because there are mica powders in the clay to give them sparkle.
If you just grab a chunk of metallic clay (I used Regular Gold Metallic Premo Accents) and rolled it into a ball, the color will appear to be marbled.
This marbled look is because the mica particles in the clay are unevenly aligned and are reflecting light in different directions.
I show an example of a checkerboard pattern made only from one color of clay (Gold Premo). From the look of the sample, it appears as though I have used two different colors of clay.
These two shades, coming from a single color block of clay, is possible because of the way the mica particles in the clay were aligned and how they were cut.
I show some other beads and samples where this color shifting property is used to create beautiful effects.
One technique that takes advantage of this unique property is called Mica Shift. In the technique, the clay is sheeted until the particles are aligned, and an impression is made into the surface using a rubber stamp.
Other objects can be used for stamping as well.
When you stamp an “aligned” sheet of metallic clay, the impressions serve to re-align the mica particles and the finished surface has the illusion of being dimensional, even though it is completely smooth.
One way to describe why the mica particles do this is to think of them as ultra tiny bits of glitter or mirror shards.
Mica particles are flat particles that are shiny on the top sides and dark on the edge sides, much like a piece of mirrored glass.
When the particles are sitting in the clay at funny angles, light gets lost in the random edges and makes the clay look dark.
Where the particles are laying flat, their shiny surfaces bounce the light off and make the clay look bright and shiny.
Rolling the clay through a pasta machine repeatedly, forces the tiny mica particles to lie flat… making the sheet of clay look all shiny… because the particles become aligned.
However, when you cut into the slab of clay and then look at the sides, you are now looking at the sides of the particles… which are dark.
In the checkerboard pattern, the clay was cut and pieced together in a manner where both the top shiny pieces and the side dark pieces were shown in the different sections side by side. This made it appear like two colors of clay were used, when in reality there was only one.
Hopefully this all make sense to you, and I was able to help you to understand the unique properties of this wondrous clay better!
00:00:03 –> 00:00:07 Hi guys, its Cindy Lietz, your Polymer Clay Tutor, and today’s Studio Tip is all about
00:00:08 –> 00:00:16 the magic of Mica and understanding the secrets to metallic and pearl Polymer Clays.
00:00:16 –> 00:00:24 Now there are some very, very beautiful, sparkly, metallics and pearl Polymer Clays out there,
00:00:24 –> 00:00:29 and Premo! is particularly good at making these beautiful clays.
00:00:29 –> 00:00:37 Now they come in all kinds of different types… or colors, this one’s Bronze, they have 18
00:00:37 –> 00:00:44 Karat Gold, Antique Gold, and they even have Pearls like Bright Green Pearl and Magenta
00:00:44 –> 00:00:48 Pearl and Silver and every…all kinds of these beautiful colors.
00:00:48 –> 00:00:55 But there are some things you need to understand about just how these… and they’re often
00:00:55 –> 00:01:01 called Mica clay ‘cause there’s Mica powder in them, just how they work.
00:01:01 –> 00:01:08 Now if I just grab a chunk of… this is Regular Gold Premo! accents, if I just grab a chunk
00:01:08 –> 00:01:16 of it and start rolling it together, you will see that it looks all marble-y, and this is
00:01:16 –> 00:01:21 because of the Mica particles that are in the clay and how they are all aligned.
00:01:21 –> 00:01:28 I’m gonna show you a couple of little things about how different the clay can look depending
00:01:28 –> 00:01:34 on how the particles are aligned, then I’ll explain how the particles… how it all works.
00:01:34 –> 00:01:40 So here is an actual… this is raw, I haven’t even baked it yet, but this is a piece of
00:01:40 –> 00:01:47 clay in a checkerboard kind of pattern that is done only with Gold clay, there’s no other
00:01:47 –> 00:01:53 color here, there’s no Bronze, there’s no other color, just straight Regular Gold clay,
00:01:53 –> 00:02:00 and look at all the…look at the two different, totally different tones that you can get just
00:02:00 –> 00:02:01 by how it’s cut.
00:02:01 –> 00:02:10 Now, I’ve got some other beads here where I’ve used the properties of the metallic clays
00:02:10 –> 00:02:15 in different ways, this one, the way I laid the pieces together, it ends up giving it
00:02:15 –> 00:02:21 almost a wood grain type effect to it, which is very pretty.
00:02:21 –> 00:02:27 And here is one, it’s more of a Mokume Gane technique using a bunch of the different pearl
00:02:27 –> 00:02:33 colors and some impressions and the way it’s sliced and a whole bunch of stuff, you get
00:02:33 –> 00:02:37 this really gorgeous in-depth color.
00:02:37 –> 00:02:44 Another technique that a lot of Clayers do is called Mica Shift and here is a sheet of
00:02:44 –> 00:02:49 it here, and I actually used one of Joan’s…I talked about Joan’s (Tayler) rubber stamps
00:02:49 –> 00:02:54 before, but I used a rubber stamp, pressed it in to the clay that was aligned…I’ll
00:02:54 –> 00:02:59 talk about it in a sec, and then sliced off the top, and even though this is completely
00:02:59 –> 00:03:06 smooth… if you look at it from the side, it’s completely smooth, it looks like there’s
00:03:06 –> 00:03:12 total depth in this piece, just because we pushed all the Mica particles out of alignment.
00:03:12 –> 00:03:18 Now the best way to kind of describe…or one way anyways, to describe what the Mica
00:03:18 –> 00:03:26 particles are is basically they’re like teeny, teeny-tiny pieces of glitter, this is a large
00:03:26 –> 00:03:32 chunk of glass glitter, but I…if you can imagine that these are just not…
00:03:32 –> 00:03:39 I don’t know not microscopic, but super, super tiny, these little flat pieces of color are
00:03:39 –> 00:03:47 in the clay, and what happens is, is if they’re laying flat…now let’s imagine like this
00:03:47 –> 00:03:54 mirror here, when it’s flat, and you see the top side of it, it sparkles, but from the
00:03:54 –> 00:03:56 side, it’s quite a bit darker.
00:03:56 –> 00:04:02 So all these little Mica particles are in the clay, and when they’re all like this,
00:04:02 –> 00:04:07 and all mixing at different angles, the light bounces off and you get it… it looks quite
00:04:07 –> 00:04:13 dark, but when they are completely flat, just like the mirror, the light bounces off and
00:04:13 –> 00:04:15 they look really shiny.
00:04:15 –> 00:04:20 So what you can do is you can actually manipulate those particles by working them, so I’m just
00:04:20 –> 00:04:24 gonna kinda flatten this out so I can run it through the pasta machine…I’ll start
00:04:24 –> 00:04:31 here, and the only way you can really do this alignment is with a pasta machine, I mean
00:04:31 –> 00:04:34 you could do it by hand, but it would take you forever.
00:04:34 –> 00:04:35 Now I’m gonna start…
00:04:35 –> 00:04:41 I’m just gonna run it at the thickest setting…I’ll flatten it out a little bit more, and you
00:04:41 –> 00:04:48 can see this top is all marbled looking, ‘cause I just rolled it into a ball, and its…you
00:04:48 –> 00:04:53 know it doesn’t look smooth or one flat sheet of Gold, so I’m just gonna run it through
00:04:53 –> 00:05:01 the pasta machine and as it runs through…and I’m gonna fold it in half and run it through
00:05:01 –> 00:05:07 again, and I’ll probably do this 15 – 20 times, but as it runs through, and those rollers
00:05:07 –> 00:05:15 keep pressing those layers down, the top side, and the back side in this case, are…all
00:05:15 –> 00:05:21 those little particles are getting forced into… to lay flat.
00:05:21 –> 00:05:25 I’m gonna go down one more setting just so that we can get this process happening a little
00:05:25 –> 00:05:32 faster, but it’s basically just squeezing those particles and forcing them to lay flat,
00:05:32 –> 00:05:38 and you can see in the center here it’s looking quite shiny and on these crippled edges here,
00:05:38 –> 00:05:40 is where you still see the dark color.
00:05:40 –> 00:05:47 Now if you continue to do this, you can get it… you don’t get them all laying…all
00:05:47 –> 00:05:55 through the entire thing, but you can get pretty deep into the surfaces of… you can
00:05:55 –> 00:05:58 get them all aligned.
00:05:58 –> 00:06:03 So we’re just gonna run it through a few more times, you can even run it through this other
00:06:03 –> 00:06:06 direction, I used to think you had to go the same direction every time, you don’t, you
00:06:06 –> 00:06:16 just have to…you just have to keep these layers flat, so you just keep running it through
00:06:16 –> 00:06:21 like that, and you can see, it’s looking quite beautiful and shiny and flat.
00:06:21 –> 00:06:36 Now if I cut through it, the side edge is actually quite dark, and if I lay this up
00:06:36 –> 00:06:42 against my shiny side, you can really see it, so I’ll push this down… lay it down
00:06:42 –> 00:06:48 and I should get my hand out of the way, see the difference of the cut edge compared to
00:06:48 –> 00:06:55 the top edge, it’s totally dark and that’s because you’re seeing the side of the particles
00:06:55 –> 00:06:58 instead of the top side of the particles.
00:06:58 –> 00:07:04 So I hope that makes sense to you, I have lots of tutorials on how to actually do some
00:07:04 –> 00:07:10 of these different techniques, the Mica Shift and that kind of thing, but what happens in
00:07:10 –> 00:07:17 a…what happens in a case like this in the Mica Shift where we push the layers through,
00:07:17 –> 00:07:24 if you push a rubber stamp or any kind of impression into the clay, it pushes some of
00:07:24 –> 00:07:30 those particles straight flat, so they stay shiny, and then it pushes the other ones just
00:07:30 –> 00:07:32 a little bit out of whack.
00:07:32 –> 00:07:38 And so then, they end up showing just a little bit darker in the areas and give the illusion
00:07:38 –> 00:07:45 of depth, but I don’t have time to go in to actually doing those other techniques, but
00:07:45 –> 00:07:50 I wanted you to understand why you get these different colors and the marbling, if you
00:07:50 –> 00:07:56 keep working with the clay and get those particles all aligned, you’ll get the shiny side and
00:07:56 –> 00:07:59 if you cut into it, you’re gonna get the dark side.
00:07:59 –> 00:08:04 Alright, so I hope that made sense to you, and if you did like this video, do let us
00:08:04 –> 00:08:06 know.
00:08:06 –> 00:08:12 And if you have anything that doesn’t make sense to you, you would like to learn more
00:08:12 –> 00:08:17 about, or you would like me to demo, make sure to leave those in the comment section
00:08:17 –> 00:08:20 below, I really want to hear from you.
00:08:20 –> 00:08:26 And don’t forget we have a great resource over at PolymerClayTutor.com where you can
00:08:26 –> 00:08:31 use the search box and find answers to all of your Polymer Clay questions.
00:08:31 –> 00:08:34 We’ll see you next time and bye for now.
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Resource Links:
- Related Video: Polymer Clay Mica Shift Technique
- Related Video: Reptile Hollow Lentil Beads
- Related Video: Mermaid Scales Mica Shift Tutorial
- Related Article: Mica Shift Polymer Clay Beads
- Related Video: Joan Tayler Rubber Stamps for Polymer Clay
- Amazon: Premo Metallic Polymer Clay **
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Hi Kathay!
Yes you can. But you need to experiment a little and test bake, before you do a huge batch and are disappointed with the results. As always, the first place to check is the “search box” here. I’d check anything that comes up that has “mica shift” in the title, because some of the demos, tutes, and blogs have comment sections loaded with info from folks who have done it.
Myself, I find that you can use mica powder, right on up to grades of mica flakes to produce stunning shift effects. Learned always to start the process of mixing in a plastic bag, because it flies all over as you start incorporating it. Keep notes.
Mica amounts vary based on the type of clay (regular colored, transparent, etc.), the deepness of pigment of the color, alcohol tinting levels, etc. You can take black and add enough black mica to get a fabu black shift.
I love rocks and minerals, and one of my last major finds was a basketball sized chunk of mica in a pegmatite blast site. The big stable part I donated to the local children’s museum, but the rest I can play with. I have a set of screens from geology class, and have bags from 1/4 inch chips downwards. All sizes have produced mica shift effects.
Too much fun. Hope this helped, and all best.
Jocelyn,
Thank you so much for all your great information…….looking forward to trying all new possibility’s……Kathay
You are more than welcome. Please share pics!!!!
Cindy someone told me that you can add mica powers to clay for mica shift have you heard about this? I was wondering if you could do this to translucent clay… Kathay
I have seen someplace where you roll beads in salt then bake them, it looks like the beads have holes all over it. What kind of salt do you use? Can you demo this?….. thank you Kathay I
Hi Kathay, that is a great one for me to do a demo of… thanks for the suggestion! (BTW you use coarse salt.)
I’ve subscribed to Cindy Lietz for years now, and have learned so much from her…. it’s about the best value I can think of! Plus … she’s charming and her videos are always fun to watch! :-)
Yes… she seems to take the hard out and leaves the easy.
I too have been a subscriber to Cindy for years,, she is amazing!!
I haven’t actually tried mica shift yet, but certainly will! Does anyone know who first did it? Some polymer clay techniques are amazing and I can’t help wonder ” who first thought to even try that?”
Thank you Cindy, I really enjoyed this one. I would have gotten NOWHERE ( polymer clay-wise) if I hadn’t found you.
Hi Julia, I have no idea who was the first to figure out mica shift. That is a good question!
Hopefully, I can shed some light on the origins of mica shift.
First, the Glass Attic:
glassattic.com/polymer/mica.htm
“The basic special effects possible from using mica clays were introduced by 3 main PIONEERS, as far as I know:
…canes –slices from which are taken, sometimes applied to sheets …Pier Voulkos
…blocks (or “ingots”) of stacked sheets of aligned clay — cut into thick slices and recombined, even in different orientations… can be cut apart, or twisted… other surface techniques…. Mike Buesseler
..(“ghost image”) …sheets of thin layers can be stacked –then stamped or otherwise impressed and shaved to reveal the patterns beneath the surface …Jami Miller”
Unfortunately, the links no longer work.
Mike Beussler:
polymerclaycentral.com/mikeb/Index.html
polymerclaycentral.com/mikeb/SkinnerBlend.html
Pier Voulkos
See below, but, especially, look for her work laminating metallic shift effects on furniture. It was a collaboration with another artist, and when the work was published, it blew my mind.
Last, google the name of the three artists mentioned, I used the following format: “artist name polymer clay mica shift”
Tons of website, pinterest and facebook links to oogle, but to me, the best feast for the eyes is to go to the top and click on images. Stunning work.
Mica shift is one of my favourite techniques, and as you say in your explaination Cindy, they really have that 3D effect but are perfectly smooth. I made some buttons in this Premo 18K gold when it first appeared in the shops. People had to pick them up and feel them as couldn’t believe how smooth they were on the surface. The checkerboard effect was stunning, will have to try that soon. Thanks for great mini tute…..cheers xx……
you must have done everything that I will suggest so I will ask anyway maybe you can start all over LOL with all you know for all the new clay artist…..could you demo rolled beads and also there is something I have seen where you roll round beads then roll them in salt then bake them, it looks like the bead has holes all over it….. thank you Kathay
Great explanation of a very technical concept. I love Mica Shift and I appreciate all you have done with pearlized clays. Once again,your practical approach opens new possibilities.
Anna