Playing with the Combing / Feathering Technique

Following my inspiration from Stephane Rolland dress I have decided to try out the Combing/Feathering technique.  The tutorial I have used for this comes from my very first polymer clay book How To Make Polymer Clay Beads by Carol Blackburn.  She has two tutorials for this technique in her first shes uses clay and calls it combing, which I have actually used before in my early days of claying as you can see below

Ocean Beaded Necklace - Combing technique using polymer clay

Ocean Teardrop Pendant - Combing using polymer clay

Her second tutorial is called feathering and she uses liquid polymer clay for this, I did also try this method first time round too but my piece would not dry and had to be scrapped.

This time round I will be trying both again but using only three colours mainly black and white with dashes of red. 

Feathering technique using liquid clay 1st attempt

Feathering

Here is my first piece ...
and although it looks great it just did'nt dry and I had to scrap it again.

I think I may have used too much oil paint which can take days to dry

Feathering with liquid clay 2nd attempt

Second attempt...
at first seemed better but after leaving it to dry it all blurred into each other and the feathering pattern was lost.

I think too much liquid clay this time, its obviously a real balancing act and one I will have to try again after all practice makes perfect.

If you have tried this effect and have any tips to help me get it right I would love to here from you.

Combing with clay 3 colours used

Combing

Here is the results from my combing technique using 3 colours of clay.

Its looking good, the pattern is larger than when I first tried this technique but I have put that down to using just the 3 colours this time.











Despite looking good its not been so easy to apply as this time round it lost its shape and pattern when applied to beads or onto a cabochon.

Combing sheet applied to pebble shaped beads

Combing sheet applied to a raised cabochon

It looks much more effective when kept flat so the pattern can't be altered, so I am still toying with some ideas of what to make with my remaining sheet.

Combing a section has been used to create a part of this pendant