Hi!

I'm fairly new to polymer clay, but I've been enjoying experimenting with my large collection of rubber stamps to make pendants. 

I really like the faux ceramic look and saw a tutorial somewhere that talked about mixing alcohol inks with liquid PC to get color.  I tried some Adirondak inks, but I'm getting very strange results.  When I mix the ink with the liquid Sculpey, all I get is brown or gray no matter what the color of the original ink.  Any ideas as to why that's happening?  What else can I mix in to get color? 

What are other ways of coloring on the clay?  I was thinking I'd like to try baking blank pendants and then stamping with ink onto the baked clay.  Can I then paint on the surface with regular inks?  Colored pencils?  paints?  or is it best to stick with tinted PC?  What do I do to get these colors to set?

 I know there are a few books out there about stamping on clay, but there's a waiting list at my local library for them, so until I get my hands on those pages, I thought I'd try here :)

Thanks!

 I am probably even less experienced than you are, but I have read that acrylic paints work well on polymer clay.  You can also do color transfer from computer output or color drawings, etc, but I'm not sure if you need to do anything aside from cure the clay to ensure the transfer is permanent. 

Hi Mom and welcome!

I've made some of the tiles you describe and think that Jacquard Pinata inks are way better than Adirondack for that technique. I think they're much more saturated colors. I followed one of the tutorials online: Stamped white clay and baked it. Then mixed ink into liquid clay. Rubbed it on the stamped surface with my finger and cured. It will look even better if you hit it with a heat gun afterwards. I think the tute says to mix the liquid clay and ink and let it sit for a bit so that most of the alcohol can evaporate and leave just color behind.

I love working with acrylic paint on clay. You can apply it to uncured or cured clay and it's surprisingly durable. Recently I made some textured buttons for a sweater. I cured them first and then applied paint to the raised surfaces. I then cured them to help bind the paint to the clay. I tested one first by putting it through the washer and dryer and it came out fine. Lumiere paints (also made by Jacquard) are nice, as are Golden paints.

 I apply ink directly to both cured and uncured clay often. I love Adirondak inks! I also like most inks but rember dye inks are not the way to go - use PIGMENT or alcohol ink. Solvent ink goes on greaat but often dissolves when you try to clear coat over it.

 My Adirondack inks worked beautifully-

how much ink are you adding? and what colors? what are you mixing them in?

I think I'll try some of the other inks, and maybe even mixing paint with the liquid clay.

Thanks! 

LoveBeads:

 My Adirondack inks worked beautifully-

how much ink are you adding? and what colors? what are you mixing them in

I have bottles I got at JoAnn's... the colors are slate (I would expect this to be grey with maybe a hint of blue, but it becomes totally black) and currant (looks red in the bottle, but is a yucky grayish brown when mixed in with the clay).  At first, I was mixing them on freezer paper that I spread on my work surface.  I noticed some of the color leached into the paper, so I thought that was the problem.  So I tried again mixing on a ceramic tile, but go the same yucky results.  I start with a little glob of Liquid Sculpey about the size of a quarter.  I've tried using up to four drops of ink, but the colors just get nastier.  "Meadow" ink was also in the package.  That one does stay generally green, but gets grey the more ink I add.  And I drop the ink out before I make my shapes so that the alcohol evaporates. 

 For now, I'm using a paintbrush to scrape ink out of some pigment ink pads I don't get around to using so much anymore.  The colors are ok, but I have a limited selection, so I was just looking to see what other mediums I might try when I go out to buy more colors.