TUTORIAL PART 2 - How To Make A Perfect Manual Skinner Blend In Polymer Clay Without A Pasta Machine

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

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PART TWO

Creating A Stepped Gradient

STEP 1

Here comes the important part. We are creating a colour gradation.

We will need to divide our colourful rectangle into equal strips. I used a metal ruler for this, but instead of putting marks on the clay, I put them right on the ruler. Also, make sure you cut the right way, which means - at the short side of the rectangle.
Trust me, it is a very bad idea to feel lazy at this step! ;) The idea is - the more strips you will have now, the better and more even your blending will be at the end. And the less rolling you will need later on! So save your time on boring rolling - have fun with mixing colours! (:

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STEP 2

To prove the fact that the more strips will create better blend at the end, I made 2 rectangles:
one is 22 strips of 2mm each (on the left), and the other one is 13 strips of 4mm each (on the right).

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STEP 3

Let's mix each strip of clay to create a stepped gradient.

Take a strip from rectangle, one by one. Roll each strip in your hands into small and cute clay balls, making sure you mixing all the colour bits in them.

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STEP 4

Yay! A colour mischief! (:

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STEP 5

Further blend effect can be seen at this step already:

TOP LINE (13 strips) - very rough colour gradation with "jumps".
BOTTOM LINE (22 strips) - nice and smooth colour gradation.

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STEP 6

Roll up your clay balls into long sausages! (:
We are going to build our colourful rectangles back.

TIP: If you wish to have an ideal rectangle, use this little trick of mine: draw yourself a helping line on a paper and use it as a template.

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STEP 7

Here comes our pretty rectangles with finished colour gradation in them. As you can see, the first one has more smooth and even gradient than a second one.

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STEP 8

Now, it is important to stick all the sausages nicely to each other, while they are still soft and well conditioned. Unfortunately, I waited a bit too long while taking photos for the tutorial, so I had to condition the clay again. The problem with this: if the sausages would not be conditioned enough, they will not stick to each other, which may cause "cracks" between the colours later on.

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STEP 9

Press the sausages nicely to each other, then roll them up carefully, using an acrylic roller.

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STEP 10

After 4 rolls of each clay rectangle, I had these results.
The left sheet is the 22 strips one, and the right one is 13 strips one.

The one on the right is very "jumpy", especially on the sides.
The 22 strips one looks good, but still not ideal.

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SO, WHAT'S NEXT?

So, here comes the Part 3, where I will show you my very own unusual way of creating smooth and even blend. The third part coming up in a couple of days!

Here is a little preview of what we are going to create! (: