you have to see this abalone. it is so realistic. I just tried faux abalone (will post once finished) using the method in Carol Blackburn's book. it is not bad but does not look real.  other tuts I've found are even worse. I am dying to know who posted this page and ask them how the heck they did it. gorgeous!

http://codie.cratered.net/faux/abalone/ 

She's got a lot of pictures of the slices. I would like to see what it looks like made into something.

I'm not a huge fan of abalone (bad colors on me) so I've never been tempted to try it. But I've thought Carol Blackburn's technique looks pretty darn authentic.

Whoa!  Looks like the real thing!  Thanks for the link.

WOW!  Looks like some skinner blends, possibly some inks, plenty of tinted and plain pearl clay, and mg techniques.    Perhaps balls of different sizes and colors, smooshed together, then sliced?

I remember finding that same picture a while back being incredibly impressed with the result. Wish they'd posted a technique.

The weird thing is that you can see that the same slices are photographed in each picture, and they seem like they are unbaked slices. But in one picture, a slice will look raw, but in the next picture it'll look baked and heavily varnished. Granted it's probably just the way the light is hitting it, but still makes that faux abalone look better than any I have ever seen.

Have tried a couple different techniques, and have never been too pleased with the results. Would love to see how that technique is done.

Has anyone tried to contact her to see if she would reveal her method?

I need to play a little bit tonite, but I think I might have an inkling how she did it. I'll let you know if I figure it out. :-)

oh yes, please please share. I am majorly in love with what she accomplished.  

Ehhh, not so much. I really thought I may have been on to something, but I ended up wasting 4 packages of clay making a mess. It's pretty tough to tell EXACTLY what she did, since she took so many pictures of the same pieces just using different camera settings. I might try again on a smaller scale later, just taking a different approach. ARGH!! An innovator, I am not! LOL

 bummer! I also tried and made several big lumps of scrap clay. actually, I came out with some nice pieces but they do not look like abalone or paua shell. I will post once my glazing is finished. I did 2 batches with oil paint + TLS and geez what a mess.

Well, looking at one of the pics from that link, it looked like she may have used some Lumiere paints. All the colors that I could see in her results were, more or less, Lumiere colors. So I put some on some translucent clay and did some slices. I may not have thinned the translucent out enough, cuz i wasn't getting the right look. Smushed stuff up a bit more, and all I succeeded in doing was making a bunch of thin layers... with crackled paint. What a mess. Not even worth keeping as scrap clay. Tossed it.

I still think I may have been on to something, but I wanna try it on thinner layers before I completely give up on it. Spent a little time looking over a couple of abalone faux recipes in some books (the Making Beads by the artist mentioned earlier in this thread (too lazy to go look) and the recipe in the Faux Surfaces book), and there MAY be something in combining both recipes. Going to take some experimentation, though, that's for sure.

yes, I tried combining techniques too. I think I might be confusing abalone with paua. not sure. anyway, the Carol Blackburn version is more pastel based and other recipes are deep blue-based. I promise to post either today or tomorrow.  

I'm gonna sit on the sidelines for this one, cheering you abalone warriors on.

The only times I've used oil paint with clay it's been a mess. One was some beads of Carol Blackburn, on the back cover of her book. Gorgeous, right? It was all over the place. The beads kept flipping upside down, like open-face jelly sandwiches on the carpet. And they took like a thousand years to dry. The other time was using oil paint to antique clay, following the advice of D. Kato. The stuff down in the crevices never dried. I can deal with a 24-hour drying period, but beyond that, it ain't for me.

People have mentioned Genesis paint, oil paint that never dries until you decide. Hey, I decide right this minute!

What about black alcohol ink? 

Carol Blackburn says to mix the oil paint with equal parts liquid clay. So I did that and I think that's what made it so super messy. I like the look of the paint better than just the black clay because it's a little more organic in the way it sort of flows and spreads. I think ink would be more like using black clay. I was thinking of using black carbon powder because it would give softer more natural lines than clay plus be way less messy than paint - however after three tries I decided I have enough blue scrap clay to last long enough and I was going to give this a rest until I had some better directions.

I think the mystery example uses a lot of mica because the slices look very iridescent and they seem to glow.  I'm not sure why she post so many of the same pictures and it is confusing to sort it out. I wish the mystery abalone master would emerge!

Ack, just lost my post. Lesson: when you have multiple windows open, pay more attention to which ones you're closing.

Andy, in my experience, acrylic paint is wondrous for surface color/effects. Every time I've messed up and wadded up the clay, the paint cracks and peels and renders the clay unfit even for scrap.

I have a couple of abalone shells in my yard and I gave them a close look today in the sun. They definitely said "interference" to me, those pink/violets and greens that shift and change depending on the angle. I wonder what you'd get by adding some interference powder into pearl or trans instead of (or addition to) colored clay.

I agree that it's kind of an odd series of pictures, basically the same pieces, shot in different light or settings on the camera. It's almost as if Codie put them there and then forgot about them until Lori found them.

I'm still wondering if inks are involved. The only time I've used Pinata Mantilla Black is with mudcloth beads and it's really black. You could get a very fine line with it.

Also, I think what sets this apart from other abalone recipes are the translucent-looking saturated colors. Alcohol ink will give you that. 

yes, a definite dichroic element. interference powders might be a good solution. inks with translucent sound good too. the best colors I used in these experiments were the pearl blue and pearl teal. I will probably try this again sometime. I poured my resin today and came out with a few winners.

I'm sooo tempted to jump in and play along on this one too, but I'm doing demos at the fair all day tomorrow and I have to prepare.   Plus I just acquired Dan Cormier's "The Cutting Edge" peeler kit for making veneers and that's next in line for experimentation.  If you've never seen his and Tracy Holmes' work:  www.dancormier.ca

maybe it's something you could try after San Diego.
 

Thanks for the link to Dan's work, jilla. But, now I feel liek a complete and utter hack. That stuff is AMAZING!

This stuff doesn't seem to be online anymore. Anybody actually download one of the images and save it? I've been fooling around with the technique and have been using oil paint in colors other than black (e.g., dark teal and purple). Also different colors than the traditional abalone pinks/blues.