A Polymer Clay Tutorial: Mica Shift Earrings

Mica Shift Earrings

Please Note: This tutorial is about Kato Polyclay Metallics. As you know, I don’t use the other brands (many of which have many colors of metallics - Kato does not so we have to do it ourselves!). Anyway, even if you don’t use Kato, you might find it interesting, just thought you should know. The Snail instruction starts at 19:36. The earring instruction begins at 1:53:17 and you may choose to watch the instruction and use any of the other metallic clays you may use!

In this tutorial, we’ll begin with a brief explanation of who invented Mica Shift (Pier Voulkos) and why it works as it does. We’ll then move into the 4 Kato Polyclay metallics.

We’ll mix our own colors and I’ll teach you my chatoyant snail and spear. We’ll move on to constructing earrings and along the way discuss metallic accents (not clay) and even what encasing looks like (that instruction isn’t really in this class, though, I need to do a tute on that soon).

What's the meaning of chatoyant?

having a changeable luster or color

: having a changeable luster or color with an undulating narrow band of white light. a chatoyant gem. chatoyant.

FOLD AND ROLL TO ALIGN PARTICLES. I ROLL APPROXIMATELY 20 TIMES.

Tools and Materials:

The usual! Pasta machine, clay blade, acrylic rod, etc.
Medium to fine grit sandpaper (I use Micromesh 1500 or 1800)

For the earrings:

Kato Polyclay: Gold or silver, Pearl, Translucent and other colors to tint the Pearl clay, Black and a bit of white.
Recommended: Kato Liquid Gold or Gold acrylic paint (I use Liquitex Iridescent Gold) and fine brushes.
Kato Clear Medium or other liquid clay
2 jump rings per pair
Earring findings


1:20 Gold Metallic Clay and Intro to Mica Shift
9:56 Silver
12:14 Copper
14:51 Pearl
19:36 The Chatoyant Snail
39:16 The Golden Spear
47:14 The Red/Orange Snail from Bullseye
1:15:17 The Green/Lime Snail from Bullseye
1:20:38 The Lime/Blue Green Snail from Plug
1:28:59 The Blue/Violet Snail from Plug
1:40:35 Metallic Accents - Liquid Gold, Acrylic Paint or Leaf?
1:46:51 Just Encase?
1:53:17 Let’s make Leaf Earrings
2:12:54 Backing the Leaf Earrings
2:21:22 Finito!

KATO POLYCLAY URLS
Links to Kato Products:

https://prairiecraft.com
https://katopolyclay.com

KATO CLASP TEMPLATES: https://prairiecraft.com/kato/DKF-CT....

REPEL GEL https://prairiecraft.com/polyclay/RP....

POLYPASTE: https://prairiecraft.com/kato/VA-1410...

Kato Clear Medium https://prairiecraft.com/polyclay/KCL...

KPC BIG BLOCKS https://prairiecraft.com/polyclay/KP1...

KATO MULTI PACKS https://prairiecraft.com/polyclay/KPC...

KATO 2 OUNCE https://prairiecraft.com/polyclay/KPC...

CONDITIONING BAR https://prairiecraft.com/polyclay/KCB...

BLACKOUT https://prairiecraft.com/polyclay/KPB...

ACRYLIC TEMPLATES https://prairiecraft.com/polyclay/TEM...

FAVE RULER https://prairiecraft.com/kato/DKF-WB7...

SCREW EYE PINS: https://prairiecraft.com/kato/DKF-SEP...