hey everybody its Kira with polymer clay TV and today I'm gonna show you how to make this awesome cuff bracelet it only takes a couple of tools so let's go ahead and get started so today we're going to go from just your regular lump of metallic clay and you do need to use one that's a pearl or a metallic and we're going to do some mica shifts so I'm I'm gonna warm up this clay and start rolling it through my machine so the first thing and this is about half a bar of primo antique gold primo accents antique gold and this is my number 1 which is the large setting so first I like to warm it up and get it moving and then roll those pieces through at the large setting sandwich them together rolling through again and I'm gonna combine them to try to get rid of my jagged edges I'm just going to work this out a little bit before I start doing the shift as I want the clay to be nice and warm before I start rolling it in one direction to get all those pieces of mica lined up that's what the technique is all about so you want to start with clay that is already conditioned then moving you don't want to be trying to force the mica shift to happen when the clay isn't even wanting to move yet okay so now we're good and I'm going to start folding and keeping my clay against the side of the machine and I like to pinch the bottom a little bit it kind of keeps the air out and you put the fold at the bottom and the opening at the top so that the air can come out the top and because I'm making a bracelet I'm gonna want this to be a little bit longer and thinner so I'm gonna go ahead and give it this kind of a lengthening treatment so it's okay to kind of fold your piece and then I'm gonna put the fold down and I'm going to apply a little pressure upward pressure I'm pulling on it so that as it goes through it remains straight okay so I'm pinching the bottom putting it against the side and then as it rolls through I'm kind of gently tugging on it so that my piece of clay remains nice and straight all right now let's work out the actual mica shift thing here so what I'm going to do is use my feather your nest stamp and I'm going to deeply impress my clay with this stamp I can from a drink it's empty and we're going to go ahead and put this piece of clay around the can for this next step so we're basically going to lay it on there get it stuck you can even I'm pushing on the back of that just to hold it still because this stuff this part doesn't really matter what we're doing is we're gonna shave we're shaving the high points and this parts gonna take a little while but basically I'm cutting off the stamped portion to reveal the Myka shift below if so listen here's the thing I'm going to be putting it on here to bake the reason I put it on here to cut off the high points of the design is just to make it easier because a lot of people put their micah shift flat on a surface and then they try to cut off all the parts and pieces in it it's just a lot harder so this is just an assist to help me before I put my piece of clay onto my actual bracelet so what we've got going on here is probably clay that needs to be trimmed a little bit so you just decide where you want your edges to be I'm just going to cut off the scraggly parts you all right so here I have a bunch of stuff going on but it's all pretty easy I had taken the peacock feather silkscreen and I took a little section of it and I used silk acrylic glaze the color here is sunflower to silkscreen a piece of souffle clay in a turquoise color so that's that for this this is cowboy souffle and it is just simply rolled out and stamped with the same stamp so you'll see echoes of the same shapes and things going on on this and with the side pieces so I took one of my graduated circle cutters and I decided which piece I thought was gonna fit best on the bracelet and I'm gonna go ahead and cut a chunk of this out and this has this is totally dry the paint is dry okay so I've got that and I also have some feathers that I molded with the same gold antique gold clay so now I'm going to go ahead and piece these on to the bracelet and I know that I want to cut this in half and quite possibly cut it down even further than that but I'm gonna start by putting this on the in making it match up to the end and bringing it toward the middle and then the same thing with this I'm not gonna strongly press these on because I'm gonna be taking them off to figure out some other stuff here so I see I have some middle portion to work with but I also have these pieces and the way I made those was simply by bending my blade around a portion of the design that I liked and then what I'm gonna do here is round these so that they'll fit around this and what I mean is I'm gonna take a chunk out so that it will fit up right against that so I took that chunk off and then with this one try to make them the same length I'll take this chunk off of that one so I've got two pieces that are about the same I'm gonna take these back off and I'm going to go ahead and put this in the middle and now I am gonna press it on real good and once your silk-screened paint is dry you can handle it so it's nice and I'm gonna press that on and then I'm going to piece these around the side like that and then this one over here and then I'm gonna take my feathers because I know where those are gonna go they're going on the center piece like this died probably what I'm gonna decide to do here is make these into strips that I could put along the edges that's what I'm feeling like it needs let's see it wants to be more finished looking on the side here see that so I'm gonna go ahead and press this on and then cut that off you so I'm just gonna go ahead and finish piecing this on all the way down to the end there cut it off and you have to decide how you want to finish these ends do you want to put a border there a little piece of cap hair watch for that you know how do you want to finish it because next thing this is going in the oven and I actually am feeling okay with this being open because I haven't decided maybe I will put some lacing here you know there's a lot of choices on how to finish the actual bracelet so the cool thing is that this texture right here this is not texture this is all pretty smooth and that is the mica shift showing up for you and I have some plans to use paint rather than powders or anything to highlight the texture designs there when I'm done after its baked so let's go ahead and bake this and I'll show you how I finish it off okay we are out of the oven and cool so when you're making this bracelet you have choices you can either choose to cover the entire bracelet blank and keep it in there or you can pop it off which I will do at the very end after I am done doing all my coloring and things and making sure that I'm really finished so I have two products here that I'm gonna use one of them is vintage patina invert agree color which is basically that copper color that you know copper ages - and then I have guilders wax in patina which is the same idea same color it's that greeny color that you get when your copper ages and I'm going to use them both because I like this this is a very glossy finish this is like a more aged looking finish and I think that it's gonna be fine using both because I've got a lot of stuff going on here and it's just gonna look cool with lots of different techniques applied so I'm gonna start with the Gilders paste and I'm just going to use my finger to grab some and then apply it to the top parts of the feather and this feather has lots of nice texture so I like that and how much and how little and where I decided to put the patina you know that's just going to depend on going back and forth until you like how your piece looks and this patina Gilders paste tends to be very subtle and light so a little bit just kind of highlights your design highlights your texture brings it out and then the vintage is a much bolder shinier more opaque kind of a look and I always keep a paper towel around and this you just shake up and you put a little bit on your work table and I always like to work on this Teflon sheet and then you I just like to tap it out and I'm just gonna put it in select areas because it's a brighter look I don't want to cover everything I just did with the lighter patina so I'm just gonna kind of decide alright it'll it'll go around the extreme edges maybe actually on the edge of that Brown see that on the edges and then here to around the extreme edge of the feather that I cut out here and then on the actual edges of the brown part and you want to work fast with the ventas because it dries real quick and then you can decide you know maybe a little bit around here to brighten it up a little bit around the actual kind of edges of the feather but not covering the more subtle thing that I did in the middle there so where you put it when you're mixing products is up to you and whether you even want to use it or not I just happen to like layering and using lots of different things so that I get sort of that mixed-media look of layered layered stuff and then when you're all finished you can go ahead and gently pry your clay off of the cuff and it'll come right off and then there you have it and if you want like I said I thought I might um I might use some sorry ribbon and actually create okay so once you've got your bracelet off the blank and like I said I thought I might want to lace up the back and I do I am gonna do that so I'm gonna show you this fun tool that I have this is a spiral punch and it is very good at punching holes so it has tips and that tips are actually interchangeable there's a couple sizes that come in the back of the handle and it's just a Chuck you just unscrew this and put in the tip that you want and then what you do is you place it on your piece and this is great for after your piece is baked you can see how perfect of a hole it makes so you're just gonna place your tool where you want to punch it out and then push let it do its thing and it actually punches holes in the baked clay and they're perfect little round shapes so that's something that I got at the craft store it's actually a Martha Stewart but you can get it at art supply stores too and it's a paper it's a paper tool for binding books because you see how it cut through a nice thick piece of polymer clay pretty easily and basically it's made for cutting through stacks of paper so that you can stitch them together so if you can't find it at your local craft store you can talk to someone at the art supply store and tell them that you're looking for a bookbinding spiral punch so I hope that you enjoyed this little project and that she make a really fun bracelet so go ahead and post what you made we would really love to see it thanks for creating along with me today on polymer clay TV