Making House Plant Leaf Canes from Polymer Clay

[@joansmith6259]

Brilliant! The veins in the second one are much more realistic!

[@Tooaquarius]

Yeah I felt that way too! I should have probably done a few ahead instead of jumping right into filming. The next time I do it will probably be better yet!

[@sweetpealee056]

I admire your tenacity in pursuing the replication of this type of leaf! Not an easy thing to figure out. Well done!

[@Tooaquarius]

Thanks :) I've been doing it so long that at least some designs seem pretty straightforward by this point

[@janebarbour948]

You are very talented 🧿

[@Tooaquarius]

Thanks! I have been at this for a while!

[@sanchapa5185]

Nice!

[@Tooaquarius]

Thanks!

[@childrenofnoha1626]

Im the one tell you to make fittonia 🎉 thanks to you lot show me fittonia red too ❤❤❤❤❤

[@Tooaquarius]

It came together in the end! I hope you have some fun with it!

[@citrusbutter7718]

Just saw your color recipes on a string. It takes me way too damn long to come up with and to mix colors for a project and i'm contently fighting with the minimal daytime lighting of NY state where even summer days are typically cloudy, so naturally you know how much colors are a struggle for me when mixing, the worst thing about it is the sunlight not really being there and those artist lightbulbs usually aren't as good as actual sunlight. So now i'm cataloging every color i come up with, the problem is ill end up with a lot of colors, i don't want to store them like other polymer clay artists do because they tend to use folders and binders, if i do that i'll end up with way too many folders, so my other option were storing them stacked on each other in boxes sectioned off in a rainbow color order pattern, but polymer clay densely packed with each other becomes heavy and every plastic and wooden box/drawer storage option I've seen have weight limits that are too small for the clays, also when i do the math ill have too many clays most likely anyway.... Although i still prefer the box/drawer method, realistically if i want to keep every color i make it would become too many boxes too even though my clay squares are only at a #2 thickness and are only 20mm tall... Then today i saw someone with theirs on strings. The only difference is i plan on labeling my colors on the backs of each color chip, like their names, then ill have notebooks with those names and what colors went into making them.

[@Tooaquarius]

Back when I started I got into clay to make beads so stringing my tiles was just a matter of course. I made lots of notes for the swatches at the time but the formulas have all changed in the 20ish years since then so now I'd say they're more approximate. I have strings with larger, flatter, tiles for with their formulas written on them as well but the fun long strings are my favourite.

[@citrusbutter7718]

@@Tooaquarius Oh i also have color chips for those color recipes. I have the 20mm square pieces that are #2 pasta machine thickness, and on the backs i'll carve the names i give them then paint white around the words on the back and get black paint in the recesses of the carves because i found out that sticker labels are a no for polymer clay (the brand i use don't want to stick also some writing inks transfers to polymer clay when they touch, it's probably better to paint anyway). I'm also going to gloss varnish the backs to see what those colors look like with gloss varnish. Then while making those i also cut a much smaller piece from that color batch. The tinier ones won't be labeled i'm just going to dump them all in containers as a color randomizer for when i want to mix and match colors for spontaneous colored projects. I recently started working on translucent mix recipes too, like how much of a color goes into translucent clays, specifically colored polymer clay (i haven't used anything like alcohol inks yet), and each batch i also have 3 different thicknesses being #9,#3, and #1 and an extra ball-ish shaped one to see what those clays may look like if i made thicker rounder projects, those will also be on strings. I'm probably going to repeat the translucent color mixes again with another brand besides just Premo, like Pardo since it's one of the most translucent clays but since i mainly use Premo brand i want to do both. I may one day do the same with other accent clays like golds or silvers but since i haven't used them in any project, their recipe mixes are irrelevant right now. I'm not going to make a whole rainbow of colors though, i only use one color mixed with the accent clays, the color I've settle on for those is turquoise since it's a medium dark clay and has both blue and yellow in it.

[@Tooaquarius]

Oh that sounds like fun! Once I went 'pro' with my clay I do so much less experimenting - I still do swatches and colour chips but not like the first few years.

[@citrusbutter7718]

@@Tooaquarius I don't really have much of a choice, the daylight wont work with me and i'm often indecisive with how much of any color i'm adding into my mixes thinking it's too juvenile of a color or too dusky grey, i'm over it, now i just want lines and lines of colors to choose from like when painters look at pantone colors in paint stores, then i can go in knowing what i want. When they eventually discontinue the colors i'll just look around for info or wing remaking those colors in premo, i'm good at replicating colors i just struggle with daytime lighting. As for the translucent, it's completely necessary because for some reason when i go in blind i always mix it wrong, most times on my own i make it too opaque, and i can't find any decent online tutorials showing how to mix certain amounts of opaque color clays into translucent clays, it's all alcohol inks and even those aren't that great of tutorials in my opinion because they usually have massive sheets of clay, i like to use how much i know i'll need per project and store the extras in plastic sheets flat in folders because i don't buy huge batches of clays, only certain colors i buy in bulk. Also the translucent tutorials also don't show anything on different thicknesses per amount of mix racio.

[@madebymellyjewelry]

I think this is sooo cool! Are you doing ok? Seems like it's been awhile since I've seen you 🥰

[@Tooaquarius]

I love the plant too, went out and got myself one after seeing how the cane worked lol. I'm fine just having less free time to sit down and edit videos with other work commitments! Which means uploading kinda infrequently, sigh.

[@madebymellyjewelry]

@@Tooaquarius I totally understand that! 😂