Over the past 8 months or so, when a project seemed fitting, I experimented with adding powder pigments to my glaze. While I had heard this was a way to add pigments to baked clay, I had never tried it myself.
There are only 3 sculptures I can think of that I’ve done this with, but I played around with different powders on pieces of white and black clay just to see what would happen. I wanted to share my results with you!
Up until this point, I mixed powder pigments into glaze that I would use specifically over where I had added that same pigment to the unbaked clay. This gave me a second opportunity to layer the pigment while locking in the powder below it.
I also mixed a pearly white pigment into my glaze to add some shimmer to an entire sculpture. Since I was treating it as a whole, this was a faster way to apply it in a less concentrated fashion (as opposed to brushing it on before baking). For this one, I was able to tell just how far a little powder can go as the shimmer was heavier than I intended.
Today, I wanted to try out how these powders look on untreated clay, that is, clay that was not covered with any kind of powder before baking, as well as the amount of powder needed to create an effect. Can we get a wash of color? Can we get something as intense as brushing the powder directly onto the unbaked clay?
Finally, I wanted to experiment with chalk pastel and powder makeup since I know those are popular powder pigment options, particularly for people starting out in polymer clay.
Note: I’m not sure of a great way to keep the amount of powder mixed in consistent, so definitely err on the side of adding less pigment, brushing a swatch out to see what it looks like, and then add more as needed.
For all of these powders, I mixed a range of glaze:powder ratio, starting with a small amount of powder and working up. They are also swatched out on both black and white prebaked polymer clay.
Powder pigment
For this category of powder, I have used pearl ex powders and other pigments from online vendors like Solar Color Dust.
Chalk pastels
Since this requires scraping chalk to create a powder, I was concerned about seeing bigger flecks of the chalk in the glaze, particularly on the white clay. I did not hold out hope for these showing up on black clay, but I swatched them just in case.
Eye shadow or some other powder makeup product
I used powder make up briefly when I first started using polymer clay. Once you use something like this for polymer clay, I would strongly recommend not using it again for your face unless you scrape it out of the main container into a separate container where you’ll be working from. I had plenty of powder make up to use, but I personally did not like the way it brushed onto raw clay. Maybe it was the brush I was using, maybe the make up was too old.
Mixed in the glaze, however, the texture doesn’t play a role.
I’d say the biggest challenge with this is creating a consistent wash of color with the glaze. Since it is no longer transparent, if you have streaky glaze, it will definitely show.
Depending on what kind of effect you’re wanting, this may not be a good option. This is definitely for a more subtle look, and will probably be better used for a shimmer or slight color change. I think it was fun to just step back and mess around with powders and glaze, however.
I hope you enjoyed this little experiment! Please let me know what else you’d like to see in the comments below.