TUTORIAL PART 1 - How To Make A Perfect Manual Skinner Blend In Polymer Clay Without A Pasta Machine

That's right! No need for a pasta machine! In this tutorial I'll show you that it is possible to create an amazing Skinner Blend (Color Gradient) in polymer clay by hand.

Believe it or not... but the final result will look like this!

PART ONE - Preparations
PART TWO - Creating A Stepped Gradient
PART THREE - Making Your Skinner Blend Perfect

While the length of the tutorial greatly increased, I decided to split it into 3 parts.
The first part is more general, and teaches how to prepare your clay for a skinner blend technique. You always need to do that with or without a pasta machine.

So, ready to start making skinner blend magic without a pasta machine? (: The second part of the tutorial will explain how to create a stepped gradient! This is an amazing technique I found only on two websites, one was in English and one was in Russian.

The third part is the most important. It shows my own unusual way of transforming the stepped gradient with "jumps" into a nice and smooth skinner blend.

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PART ONE

Preparations

STEP 1

We will start with 3 blocks of Sculpey clay. I chose 2 colours that are close to each other and will definitely blend nice and smooth, and a contrasting deep red colour which will reveal any uneven blending that may appear.

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STEP 2

a.  For my tutorial I used about 1/5 or 1/4 of each block, but you can use as much or as less as you wish. Just make sure you use about the same amount of each colour.
b.  Condition your clay... Sit on it! (:  Then, when it's soft enough, roll the clay into equal sheets.
c.  To make it easier for myself, I then stack my sheets of clay on top of each other.

TIP: Make sure the sheets are not warm and soft, or they will stick to each other. Either leave them separated for a while or put them in a freezer for about 5 minutes.

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STEP 3

Have a look at STEP 2 again.
Mark a rectangular shape on the top sheet of clay with a tissue blade, and cut all 3 sheets at once.

TIP: If you find that easier, you can make a card template for this.

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STEP 4

Slice your stacked clay rectangles as shown.

TIP #1: If your wish to have more of the middle colour in your gradient - you can slice from corner to corner.
TIP #2: Once you master this slicing, make sure to try corner to corner one, or make your rectangles longer and do uneven slicing with many colours in it, like so:

Imagery from this tutorial

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STEP 5

Separate your sliced pieces.
Now, lets play puzzle! Grab all the pieces and put them together as needed. (:

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SO, WHAT'S NEXT?

The second part coming up in a couple of days!
Here is a little preview of what we are going to create! (: