Color and design can be carefully planned, but I tend to love playing with Polymer Clay in a purely serendipitous fashion. In the past, I would ball up my scraps and set them aside to become homogenized into sheets of muddy colors, which I could then use for bead cores and armatures. But I’ve discovered that some scraps are so interesting they beg to be used more creatively. After cutting out a lot of dots to make disks for another project, I was left with little O’s that were just too good to throw into the scrap pile. Instead, I applied them to a sheet of solid color and ran it through the Dream Machine. For the next pass, I applied bits of foil and bits and pieces of other scrap clay. A top sheet of translucent clay lightly dusted with a bit of pearlescent powder was then added. With several more passes through the machine, some unexpected designs appeared - the clay had buckled a bit while being fed through the rollers, which created streaks of deeper color. While it didn’t particularly enhance the design, I found it to be rather interesting and a springboard for changing pattern on future pieces. Further reducing the clay in thickness to a wafer-like layer, I found that I had a sizeable sheet of veneer with which to cover tools and other objects. Of course, I love texture and am constantly adding bit and pieces to flat sheets just to mix the design up a bit!
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