Day 2: I was bad and purchased some more clay. I’ve come to like the metallic colours a lot, and the mica effects really make the pieces unique. Although, if you want to do without the mica, there really is no way. Another favourite is white transparent clay. I use this almost everywhere, it’s a staple for me.


I worked on a more dull colour spectrum, as I didn’t like the bright child-like look of the batch I made the first time. Using my own handmade colour mixes, I really like the outcome. I made my own green from scratch, using cyan and yellow with a little metallic gold and black to get the smoky olive green. I need to polish up on my colour names. This is the best I can do to describe it!


I’m really happy with how these turned out. I tried a chop and mix technique with transparent and opaque white to get this depth effect. They were the most time consuming beads to make, but definitely worth it, just to look at the crackly-marbly-depth. I’m going to list some of these style beads for sale and see how they go. Because I make my own colours, it took me nearly an hour to get a shade I liked, not to mention the chopping and mixing I had to do for the outer layer!


Using the chop and mix technique again, and then just swirling them around a bit to get this effect. The good part about using a metallic clay, it adds the metallic effect to the other clays as well. The whole bead gets sparkly! Not sure if these will sell, since they are quite easy to make.


Using leftover clay, I made lots of spacers! I wanted to get a dark brown, but ended up with a lovely bronze for these disc spacers!! I love how they turned out, but I will probably never be able to get the exact shade again. I didn’t record my mixes (and I don’t intend to). Thankfully, my design skills can be utilised here when it comes to mixing colours. I generally know what colours to use to get a tone, from all that practice with illustrator. Never had an un-salvage-able sickly colour so far.

This ‘quick fix’ hobby has turned out to be rather fun, and I think I will stick with it for a while before starting my glass beads. It’s way more economical and allows me to fulfil my wish to make beads. The only thing is, it’s time consuming and sticky. I also need a little more equipment so I can work a lot faster. Pasta machine, I will get you soon!