How to Make a Polymer Clay Skinner Blend

The polymer clay skinner blend. Those beautiful polymer clay sheets of color gradations have so many uses. Use one as a base for a slab with added elements or all on its own. Silk screen a design on top. Mica shift. Mokume gane. Skinner blends are especially useful in making canes. Roll up a sheet for a bullseye cane, or accordion fold to make a skinner plug. These blends add a depth and dimension that’s difficult to achieve without them.

I’m not sure I could imagine creating with polymer clay without a skinner blend, but back in the day polymer clay artists went without this beloved staple in their arsenal. The skinner blend was developed by Judith Skinner in 1996 when, only a year into working with polymer clay, she was problem solving on a color gradation she’d been working on. Without any testing, Judith’s mathematician brain (she’d worked in computer software engineering) quickly figured out two triangles of different colors butted up against each other and fed through a pasta machine would create the subtle color gradation she was looking for. Eureka! 

Here’s a look at how to make a polymer clay skinner blend, a simple and oh-so-useful technique for any polymer clay enthusiast to master.

Tools & materials

• Non-porous work surface (I work on either glazed tile or glass)
• Two (or more colors) of polymer clay (see Notes)
• Pasta machine dedicated to polymer clay use (I use an Atlas 180 and will refer to the settings I use on my machine. If you don’t have a pasta machine an acrylic roller and some playing cards will do in a pinch, it’ll just take a little more work.)
• Polymer clay blade

Directions

For a two color polymer clay skinner blend chose two colors that will blend harmoniously. One lighter and one darker shade works best for this technique.

Using equal amounts of each color (I used 3/4 oz of each for the first example) condition separately, doing your best to keep the sheet in a rectangular shape so you don’t have to bother with trimming. Finish sheeting the clay on a medium setting (no.3 on my Atlas)

Cut each sheet on the diagonal—not quite corner to corner, but slightly offset.

Stack the same colored triangles together and then join them together forming a rectangle. Press the join together with your fingers.

Fold the sheet in half and press down on the folded edge slightly so it feeds into the pasta machine easily. Remember: the folded edge is always fed into the rollers first when making a polymer clay skinner blend.

You now have four layers of clay to feed through the pasta machine so, starting at your thickest setting on your pasta machine (no.0) feed the folded edge into the machine. Keeping one of the sides butted up against the edge of the machine will help keep your sheet of polymer clay square. Drop the dial to a medium thick setting (no.2) and run the sheet through again without folding it.

Now, fold the sheet, being careful to fold it so one color is on one side and the other color is on the other side. If you fold in the other direction you’re gonna end up with a lovely sheet of solid color—not what our aim is here.

This time when you feed the folded edge into the machine be sure to flip it so the other side is butted up against the side of the machine.

Continue to fold the sheet in half, place the fold against the rollers, and alternate sides each time you pass the polymer clay through the pasta machine. After four or five passes through the machine you’ll start to see the clay blend together.

Keep going. After 15 or so passes through the machine, folding and flipping each time, you well end up with a beautiful polymer clay skinner blend. Don’t worry about how many times exactly the clay goes through the machine, continue until you are happy with how the blend looks.

You’ve now mastered the polymer clay skinner blend technique!

But let’s keep going . . .

Sometimes, one of the colors you’ve chosen will overpower the other color. In this case, for a more subtle color transition, rather than a straight diagonal line joining the two shades together, use a curved line as shown above. 

This approach calls for some trimming to square things up just right at the start but as you can see the purple doesn’t overtake the vanilla shade as much as it did in the first example.

Three Color Blend

For a three color polymer clay skinner blend condition your clay, again keeping the sheets as rectangular as possible so you don’t have to trim them into shape and finishing on a medium setting (no.3)

Cut the outside colors as you did before into triangles slightly offset from the corners. Cut the middle color into two strips. Stack the triangles and the strips on top of each other.

Butt the edges of the triangles and the center strip up against each other as shown. Press the edges together with your fingers. 

Fold the stacked clay in half, again making sure to fold so the color matches up. Press the folded edge down a little so it feed into the machine easily. 

As above, start at the thickest setting on your machine (no.0) because you’re working with four layers of clay. After the first pass move the dial to a medium thick setting (no.2) and  pass the sheet through again without folding it yet.

Fold the sheet, keeping like colors lined up with like, feed the fold into the rollers, and flipping the clay over each time so each edge gets a turn being lined up with the edge of the machine.

If you find a color is not blending into the next one as much as you’d like, simply offset the fold for a few passes through the machine. I had too much of the vanilla color left on that side of the blend and after folding in an offset manner a few time more blue worked its way into the vanilla and I was much happier with the result.

If you’d like to use more than three colors in your polymer clay skinner blend, simply use the same process as outlined above. Use triangles for the outer colors and strips for the inner colors. 

Experiment and have fun!

A Few Additional Notes

If you are bothered by the ragged edges I start out with when building my blends go ahead and be more intentional with the shapes you start with. I used to carefully trim my sheets into precise rectangles but have found it’s an unnecessary step most of the time. I do, however, still trim the clay sheets when I’m setting up to make a blend in the same manner as shown in the second example.

Butting the edge of the sheet against the side of the machine with each pass helps keep the clay rectangular but it will still stretch out with each consecutive pass. To help keep your blend from spreading out to the full width of the rollers place an unwrapped package of clay (or two if you want an even narrower blend) on top of the rollers.

Lastly, if you are new to color mixing or don’t have experience with color theory I suggest testing your clay colors first by mixing a small amount together before making an entire blend. Spending time making a blend only to have it come out in murky shades of turd brown is disappointing. Unless, of course, that was the look you were going for.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this tutorial on the polymer clay skinner blend technique. If you have any questions or comments I’d love to hear from you.

Happy claying!