How Mica Shifts Work With Metallic Pearlescent 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... More Info: http://www.beadsandbeading.com/blog/?... Polymer Clay Tutor.

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!

Related Video: Polymer Clay Mica Shift Technique... http://www.beadsandbeading.com/blog/?...

Related Video: Reptile Hollow Lentil Beads... http://www.beadsandbeading.com/blog/?...

Related Video: Mermaid Scales Mica Shift Tutorial... http://www.beadsandbeading.com/blog/?...

Related Video: Mica Shift Polymer Clay Beads... http://www.beadsandbeading.com/blog/?...

Related Video: Joan Tayler Rubber Stamps for Polymer Clay... http://www.beadsandbeading.com/blog/?...

And... more info about today's video is at my blog... http://www.beadsandbeading.com/blog/?...

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