I've got a new mini project going on today. I'm making some faux Turqoise (blaming one of my lovely friends for encouraging me with a further distraction from my work plans). I've seen amazing examples of all kinds of faux semi precious stones made from polymer so am hopeful I can achieve something worthwhile. I'm using advice from Carol Blackburn's book How to make polymer beads. I often refer to this book for reminders re techniques. Carol is very precise and I trust her clay mixes for colour every time.
My plan is to produce two different varieties of Faux Turquiose - Eastern (a more green colour) and Southwestern (a more blue colour). I warm slightly towards the Southwestern at the moment but am open to persuasion on this one. The image below shows how much of which colour I'm using in the mix. There are many variations in colour shades of Turquiose, so it's not critical but Carol talks about a ratio of 10 Turquoise to 1 caramel and 1 yellow for Eastern and 8 Turquose to 1 of white and 1 ecru for Southwestern, I'm pleased with the mixed colours.
As I've mentioned, the basic colours are mixed and Im ready to add some black paint/ grated clay to give the 'imperfection' element to the stone. I also need to chop up the clay to give an appearance of nuggets of rock. Carol uses a wavy ripple blade to do this.
I intend to make up some Doughnut beads for silver hoops and some beads for a planned beading project and we will see what's left.
Next time, I will share the next steps and hopefully my final, finished beads. This is just a short project so 'fingers crossed' all goes to plan.
Thanks for reading.
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