Hi guys, its Cindy Lietz, your Polymer Clay
Tutor, and in today's studio tip, I'm going
to show you how to make a Skinner Blend, I'm
gonna show you a couple of different versions.
Now the coolest thing about Polymer Clay is
that you can use it in… you can blend it
actually in a beautiful color blend that shifts
from one color to another.
And you can do it in a two color shift like
I have done here, where you've got a White
to Black but you can also do it in more complicated…
such as a rainbow blend such as this.
Now in a previous video, I showed you the
old school way of making blends, and it was
a stepped blend where you actually mixed different
amounts of clay together by hand, and you
got a color blend like this.
But a few years ago…
I don't know, 20 years ago or so, a Polymer
Clay Artist named Judith Skinner came up with
a much simpler method of making a graduated
blend, and it's actually a lot smoother as
well, and I'm gonna show you how to do that.
What you take is…we're gonna do the 2 color
one here, so I've got 2 colors…you'll see
the biggest…you’ll see the biggest effect
if you use colors with contrast in them, if
you use 2 colors that are very, very close
to each other, you may not see the shift as
clearly, but they'll still… it'll still
show, it can be quite a pretty effect.
Now I'm gonna use…where is this, I need
a little bit of water, I wanna stick these
2 together temporarily, and this clay is quite
sticky, and the lights are a little bit warm,
so I'm gonna put some water in between my
layers here, but you don't necessarily have
to do that, depending on if your clay is sticky
or not.
And I'm just gonna lay these 2 on top of each
other, and I'm gonna cut them into a rectangle,
like this, it could be square or rectangle,
with the water in between, it comes apart
super easy.
Now we have a rectangular shape, 2 of them,
1 of each color, and then what we're gonna
do is we're going to cut… while they're
stacked together, we're going to cut them
from corner to corner, and essentially, what
we're gonna do is create some triangles.
So I'm gonna just cut straight through the
stack, both stacks at once from corner to
corner, then I'm gonna peel them apart and
I have some triangles.
Now I'm gonna dry them off, because I don't
wanna mix the water into the clay when I blend
it, if you have really stiff clay, you won't
have that issue.
Now I'm gonna take this triangle and flip
it over so that it matches the one on the
bottom, so the White clay on top of White
clay, and this will be the bottom part of
the rectangle.
Then I'm gonna match up the Black on the other
side, just to reform the triangle…I mean
the rectangle that was there before, only
now we're gonna have White on one side and
Black on the other, okay?
So as we blend this whole stack together,
it's going to be similar to this one here,
where…if you look carefully, you can actually
see a triangle shape here, and you're going
to be…we're gonna be blending this together.
But on this side, basically you're gonna have
more White and just a touch of Black, half
way through, it's gonna be 50-50, you're gonna
have equal amounts White and equal amounts
Black, and then by the time you get down to
this side of the blend, you're gonna have
very little White and a lot of Black, so it's
the same idea only much simpler.
And I guess Judith had a background in Science
or Math or something and that's what made
her think in this Geometric kind of way, which
was nice for all of us.
So I'm just gonna roll this a little bit so
that I know that they're stuck together, and
a little thinner so that I can put it through
the pasta machine.
Now, we're going to run it through the pasta
machine at the thickest setting, and I'm putting
it in carefully, that I have White on one
side and Black on the other, I don't want
to turn it this way, I'm gonna turn it this
way, and I'm gonna kinda try to control the
sides with my fingers here, so as I roll it
through, we'll have one sheet of clay.
Now what we have to do is put it…fold it
in half, always fold it in half the same way
every time, and then we're going to run it
through the pasta machine again, and what
this does is each time we do that it starts
mixing those layers together and starts creating
a blend.
Now at first, it will look terrible, or you
won't see much of an effect, but as you keep
doing it, the colors will start to blend together.
So you can see it's starting to blend, so
I'll keep doing that and come back and show
you a little further along.
Okay, I'm about halfway through the process,
it's starting to blend together, it’s still
quite streaky, and a little bit uneven, there’s
still little bits here that aren't completely
folded in, but I will just continue to do
this folding in half and running it through
until it's much smoother, and then I'll come
back.
Okay, so I went through another bunch of times,
and it is much smoother now, I could probably
go on a little bit further if I wanted to.
You'll find that you'll need to go through…depending
on how soft or hard your clay is, you know,
anywhere from 15 - 40 times before you have
it properly blended, so that's how you do
that one, as you can see, it's quite Gray,
there's not any really pure White at this
side, and not really any pure Black because
there was still just a little touch of Black
here, remember when the triangle was there,
and just a little touch of White, so you never
really get a completely pure color on either
side.
Unless you do something that's called an Offset
Skinner Blend, so I'm gonna show you that.
So we got 2 more pieces of clay here, and
I'm gonna use the water again, you can use
this water trick on anything that you don't
want your clay to stick together on, and…
when it’s raw of course, so I'm cutting
out another triangle again…or a rectangle,
it's getting late in the day, I'm surprised
my brain is still even working, anyways, so
here we go we have a rectangle.
And this time, instead of going from corner
to corner, I wanna leave a little bit of the
White on one side and little bit of the Black
on the other, so I'm gonna offset my blade
and come in about a quarter of an inch off
the end here and about a quarter of an inch
off this end here, so I'm off- setting it.
It needs to be about the same size, you can
measure it if you want, I tend to eyeball
everything, but I'm just gonna cut through
both layers like that, peel them apart once
again, dry them off once again, I don't want
that water mixing into the clay, otherwise
you'll get bubbles and plaquing and other
issues.
Now we're gonna take this and we'll have to
flip it around to get it to match, we’re
stacking it the same way, only it has this
little flat edge on it this time.
And we need to do this Black one here, and
it's got the Black flat edge, like that, so
that's why it's called offset ‘cause that
cut is offset a bit.
This time, when we blend it and fold it and
do all that, it's gonna leave a bit of a pure
White section here, and a little bit of a
pure Black section, and make for a bit more
of an obvious blend.
We're gonna run it through the pasta machine
the same way, I like to use my fingers on
the side so it doesn't get too wide.
Fold it in half, again, and keep doing this
until it's blended, we'll come back when it's
about halfway blended for you.
Okay, so I'm about halfway through the blending
process, I have to be a little bit careful
that I don't bend it too sideways and get
too much Gray into this White, but we still
have some pure White on this side and some
pure Black on that side, what I mean is, I
need to make sure I keep them straight together
and not like kitty corner or angled at all,
‘cause then you can mess up the alignment
of your blend, so I'll keep blending and come
back when I'm done.
Alrighty, so this is starting to come along
quite nicely, I could blend it a little bit
further if I wanted to, but we have a nice
White edge blending off to a nice Black edge.
Now clay blends can be used for all kinds
of beautiful projects for Polymer Clay.
The Skinner Blend is a nice simple way of
making a gradiated blend.
You can, like I said, you can get really complicated
and have all these different angled ones and
make some Rainbow blends.
Plus there's a bunch of other neat ways as
well, other techniques and faster ways to
do color blends as well, which I'll show you
in another video.
So my question is, have you ever made one
of these Skinner blends?
Do you have any challenges with them?
And make sure to leave those in the comment
section below, and let us know what you think.
If you like this video and it was helpful
for you, make sure to press that like button;
that would be great.
And if you have suggestions or anything for
future videos, please let us know.
So we'll see you next time, and bye for now.
