Perfect For Sculpting Dolls And Fabulous for Making Face Canes:
In packing up the earrings and jewelry I needed for the craft fair I’m doing this weekend, I realized I needed to put together some color mixing recipes to go with this week’s video tutorial in the Polymer Clay Library.
While thinking over what color palette would be a good one to showcase, I came across the “Jungle Ninja – Warrior and Protector of Mother Earth” earrings (pictured above) with her cute little face peeking out from her leafy headdress.
Then it dawned on me… I haven’t given you any skin color recipes yet! For all of you that want to make polymer clay face canes or even those of you who make dolls, having some nice skin tone color recipes can be really helpful.
The fantastic variety in the skin colors of our world is a thing of beauty. These recipes are not only useful for sculpting dolls but also fabulous for making face canes.
So the next set of color recipes you can look forward to downloading at the Polymer Clay Tutor Library are:
- Cocoa Skin
- Fair Skin
- Copper Skin
- Porcelain Skin
I think you will love them and will find them very useful in your polymer clay projects!
If you haven’t already, be sure to read my Introduction to Polymer Clay Color Mixing (general recipe tips and techniques).
When you get these recipes you can adjust the skin tones to your liking by adjusting the amount of the lightest or darkest color in the recipe. Translucent can be added as well to change the luminosity of the skin tone. Make sure to write down your new formula in the notes section of the recipe card.
Dear Cindy,
Thanks for the new recipes, but the bonus recipe is Cashmere Rose and not as listed in the index Fair skin…
Have a nice day
Janine
Thanks for pointing that out Janine. It’s great to see that you are keeping up to date with your color recipe collection.
For the benefit of others reading this, Janine is referring to the Polymer Clay Recipe Card series. You can receive one complimentary card each week by subscribing to my Polymer Clay Guest List. The link by my name will take you to the sign up form.
As biochemist I work for the ministry of Education and Culture. I finish also an Art School in Athens. I´m teaching stained glass, mosaic and handicraft to the Adults Education Centers. I have for this year 150 students every week. Last July I started the Cyprus Polymer Clay Association. Now the association has 63 members and still growing. I teach Polymer clay for 4 years now and Silver Art Clay for 1 year only. My book will be ready next year in English and Greek. Thank you for your video library.
Hi Cindy,
I purchased a ceramic princess doll for a bank and when I was cleaning it very carefully I somehow broke off 2 fingers. One of them it was just the tip and the other finger the entire finger fell off. I decided to bake them in the kiln and glue on after. Glueing has not yet worked. I can put a bouquet of flowers in her hand to hide the fact of the missing fingers but the good hand is in the position that should be holding flowers not the broken one. What I am asking is if you think it would work to take some polymer clay to smooth the finger out after using liquid pc between the pieces I am attaching then bake in oven. I will have to use my oven in kitchen because of the size of doll. Thought I could buy 2 foil roasting pans and lay a piece of cloth in the bottom to set doll on then put the 2nd pan upside down over top of bottom pan and take foil to seam shut. Do you think the PC would stick to the ceramic. I can make a seed bead ring to help cover the seamed area if needed. I am in tears over this. The princess doll is beautiful and perfect for what my grandaughter would like. Any suggestions?
Kindest Thanks,
Peggy
That’s too bad about breaking the fingers on your doll Peggy. I would worry about baking your ceramic piece in the oven, even though it was probably fired at a much higher temp, you can’t be positive whether the paint or any metallic trim was. Maybe you could make and bake new fingers separately and then glue them on after with some Krazy glue. The seed bead ring is a great idea! I bet that would work quite nicely! Good luck!
Thank you Cindy for the suggestions. I am going to try to bake the fingers seperate then glue on like you said. I have found another princess doll since I wrote and have purchased it. I should be getting in the mail any day now. So if this doesn’t work I now have another doll to use. I might even end up liking the 2nd doll better. Who knows. Will let you know how things work out.
Thanks again, Peggy
quick quesiton re colour mixing. When using a cutter to do parts, like 1/8 of a part do you cut one part into 8th’s? and if you are using small one does that mean a smidgen of that colour? example for the glacier colour you need 1/32, how do you work that one out?
Thanks
@Sandra: Yes, for something like 1/8 of a part, you take a part, cut it into 8ths, and use one of those 8ths. It’s easier to cut such fractions when you use a square cutter for your parts, as you can cut diagonally from corner to corner to get an even division (rather than having to guess where the centre is on a round cutout).
For small fractions like 1/32, you could use something like this neat grid stamp by Elise Winters. The bottom right part that it marks is subdivided into 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32 and 1/64: stamp it onto your clay and cut along the lines:
polymerclayexpress.com/tools.html
Personally, I just multiple everything up until I have whole parts to work with (fractional parts are less precise even when you cut carefully, and I’m very pedantic about that kind of thing). So if I had a recipe that used 1 part of Colour A and 1/32 part of Colour B, for example, I’d multiply all the quantities by 32 and use 32 parts of Colour A and 1 part of Colour B. (If you don’t want to cut so many parts, just multiply it by a smaller number to get more convenient fractions.)
Sue, thanks heaps, that is so easy to understand now.
Cindy, can’t wait to do the rose cane, I love roses, I do have a couple of tutes already, but am looking forward to your one as well.
Cheers
I gave my granddaughter a porcelain doll. She has a cloth body with porcelain arms and legs. One leg is broken at the top. Can I bake sculpey oven bake clay onto the broken area to repair the missing area? Thanks
@Marcia G: That is an interesting request, haven’t gotten that one before! You might be able to use polymer clay to repair your doll, but I would remove it from the doll first. I probably wouldn’t be a good idea to bake the doll, since it would be difficult to really know what was inside it. There may be some glues, plastics, and or paints that would not fair well with heat.
You may be better off repairing the piece with an epoxy clay or an airdry clay. Epoxy would be very strong. I do not know much about either clay though, maybe someone else from here can help you better?
I’m planning on making a face cane and none of the Premo colors look right for a skin tone. I was searching for recipes and came across this post. I searched through the A series and couldn’t find this, so I assume it’s from the complementary series. I know there isn’t a way to get these later, I was wondering if there’s any way I can get these recipes? Or if anyone has a go to skin color recipe that they could share? I’m a total color theory spaz so any help would be great!
Hi Krithika, Unfortunately those color recipes have been discontinued. They were recipes I created at the very beginning and were not up to the standards that I have today. Some of the recipes were using Fimo, SculpeyIII and Premo mixed together and used terms like “trace amounts” of this or that color. So quite a log time ago I had them taken out of circulation. That is probably why you couldn’t find them.
A good base for skin tones is to start with is Premo Beige. It is a semi translucent color that works well for pale faces. You can tint it to whatever skin tone you wish using Ecru, Blush, Raw Sienna or Burnt Umber in tiny, tiny amounts. Making up new skin color recipes would be a good thing for me to do. I will add it to the list of things to get done, one of these days… :)
If I was just sculpting, I’d go with beige tinted with something, but for a cane I want the main color to be a mostly opaque color. I don’t want it to go translucent on me later. I will try experimenting with some mixes of beige, ecru and blush and see if I can come up with something. Thank you!