Mica Shift with Polymer Clay

I initially first tried mica shift in my early claying years with little success and on the few occasions I have revisited using mica clay, I have still had little success with what would appear to be a relatively simple technique.

So my first blog post on Mica Clay will be about testing out three differnent brands to see if there is a difference in its mica effect, the chatoyancy.

Polymer Clay Mica from left : Premo Sculpey, Fimo Effects & Kato Polycaly

I will be using the following brands

• Premo Sculpey in Copper
• Fimo Effects in Gold
• Kato Polyclay in Copper

I will testing the clays, using the rubber stamping technique, which many clayers will be familar with and can be found in many ploymer clay books and onine tutorials.

Mica Clay impress with a deep stamp

Once my clay is conditioned and rolled through the pasta machine I use a deep stamp to impress my stamp onto the clay 

Each peice of impressed clay is then taken and I carefully slice away the raised part of the impression on the clay, which will leave an imprinted image onto the clay that appears raised, but is in fact smooth.  Below you can see how each brand faired

Mica Shift Fimo Effects Gold

Fimo Effect Gold

The image is quite clearly visible.

Mica Shift Premo Sculpey Copper

Premo Sculpey Copper

Not a big fan of Premo as a brand but as you can see the image again is clearly visible.

  

Kato Polyclay Copper

As you can see the image is not as clearly visible here.














Now the impressed images don't look all that impressive in my opinion, so I cut some pendants out and cooked the pieces, i then sanded with 600, 1200 & 2000 and buffed with my hobby tool.  The difference once properly prepared and finished is clear and far more impressive.

Mica Shift Round Pendants - Premo & Kato Polyclay

Here you can see that although not as clear as the Fimo and Premo, the Kato Polyclay once finished looks a little better once complete.

Mica Shift Pendants Fimo Effects

Mica Shift Pendant with Premo, Fimo and Kato Polyclay

So overall for future projects I would definitely be using the Fimo Effects or Premo Sculpey, although not a fan of Sculpey for its smell and being to soft for caning, in this case i found its softness aided in removing the slices of impressed clay.


This post is part of Handmade Monday with Handmade Harbour