So to pair up with last week’s galaxy themed blog post, I thought it’d be fun to follow with a tutorial on how to create your very own galaxy effect with polymer clay. I’d say it’s a pretty easy look to achieve, and it’s a lot of fun to do! The number of supplies is pretty limited as well, so I think that helps make this a nice technique for a variety of polymer clay artists, whether you’re a professional or just starting out.

Supplies:

• Black polymer clay
• A medium sized brush (I recommend using a cheaper one—I like using a round brush to apply pearl ex, but you can experiment to see what works best for you.)
• Pearl ex (you could use shimmery eye shadow too)
• A medium flat brush
• A toothpick, end of a paint brush, or some other tool to create bigger stars
• White acrylic paint

Step 1: Sculpt

You will first want to create your piece with the black polymer clay. For all intents and purposes, I’m creating a disk here, but you could create anything you’d like! For the dragon last week, I sculpted a black dragon with white accents. You could sculpt a figure, create beads, make a pendant…it’s all just a matter of what you feel comfortable making.

You could also experiment with base colors as well. Black works because it’s how galaxies and space are typically depicted, and dark colors would work the best so that the pearl ex powders and paint contrast enough to stand out.

Step 2: Brush on the pearl ex

Next comes the main part of the galaxy effect: adding the pearl ex.The colors I like to use are blue, purple (although my purple pearl ex is a purple with a blue shimmer, so it doesn’t always look different…), and pink, with a shimmery white or silver to use as a highlight.

As a note, in the supplies I did mention that you could use shimmery eye shadow if you don’t have pearl ex powders. I know there are several other polymer clay artists who do this. I have not personally tried out the galaxy effect with eye shadow, so if this is something you end up trying, I’d love to see your results!

The first time I tried this technique, I started with the shimmery white powder and layered the other colors around it. This was to give that kind of starburst effect in the center. I picked areas around the dragon and began applying one color at a time, making sure there was plenty of space in between for the dark background to show through. I then rotated through the colors a few times and placed blocks of color around the white to create different looking galaxies.

And here’s a top view of what this looks like when you’re done.

Step 3: Bake

Once you’re happy with the look of your galaxies, go ahead and bake it. I used premo clay, so I baked my dragon at 275 degrees F for 30-40 minutes for safe measure (I use an armature so the entire sculpture isn’t only clay). I baked this disk for 20 minutes because it wasn’t very thick. Be sure to follow package instructions.

Let the clay cool in the oven.

Step 4: Add stars

Now for the messy part! It doesn’t really matter what order you do this next part in, whether you want to create the big or small stars first. I’m going to start with the small stars for this demonstration.

It helps to have a flat head brush to do the paint splatter part. I dip the tip of my flat brush into some clean water and then into my white acrylic paint. I then brush my finger along the bristles to splatter paint onto my sculpture. This helps give a more random placement for the stars, but you could of course put them on individually if you’d like!

Once you’re happy with how the little stars are, you can go in with either a small detail brush, toothpick, the end of a paint brush, really anything that would give you a circular shape that is bigger than the paint splatter. This way you can go in and add a few bigger stars to stand out from the smaller ones.

Step 5: Apply glaze

While glaze isn’t needed for polymer clay, I would highly recommend it after any kind of treatment that involves things like pearl ex or paint. The glaze helps protect these from scratching off. Glaze also deepens the color of black clay and really brings out the colors of the galaxy effect. Here’s a before and after so you can see the difference:

Once the glaze is dry, you’ve got yourself a galaxy piece and a new technique to stick in your metaphorical pocket. This is the same technique I used on the galaxy pieces I made so far (although I did to the left dragon and the turtle a little differently when it came to applying the stars):

What do you think? Is this a technique you’d like to try at some point? I’d love to know your thoughts!