Studio Time: Custom Mixing Colors to Match

And now for my latest little endeavor...color matching! I tried this a few times in a glass and it was always a lot of experimentation because of the glass reactions. (That's also part of the fun of glass--when you're not trying to match colors--is waiting to see what will come out of the kiln.) For examples, I did a bridal party jewelry and it took a little testing to find a glass that matched. However, with Maggie Maggio's lessons in color mixing polymer clay, it gave me a jump start on matching. And let me just say, getting the right color in clay is much easier. I find the polymer colors a little boring by themselves, but with a light wash of the glittery inks, I get the shine and sparkle in the beads that I want. (Hard to cure the glass-geek in me.)

Here are the earrings, which are in the lovely dove gray and will be great every day earrings. Even did my own ear wires as I needed French hooks and didn't have any. A little rough at my first try, but it will improve.


I have a few shirts that I don't really have jewelry for, so I thought I'd try out the color mixing on this one, as it had some of the most unusual colors that I wouldn't have jewelry for. My goal was not to mix to match exactly. I wanted to have the color be slightly off because I like my jewelry to pop and not blend. The yellow/orange clay mixed slighty more orange, the dove gray and navy blue were slightly lighter. However, when I put a wash of silver on the navy and dove, it matched exactly. I put a wash of copper ink on the orange-yellow and it made it fairly orange, but I was still happy with it because the brightest color now popped. Goal achieved!

I'll share the recipe mixes for the two colors from Fimo clay. Sorry, I don't have exact measurements as I just played with it until I got it right.

Navy: Cobalt with Black
Dove Gray: Navy (from the above recipe) mixed with white and a small amount of Chocolate
(recipe mix: navy blue, lightened up with a bunch of which and a smidge of chocolate thrown in) was slightly lighter