Faux Amber - A Slightly New Approach

There are many wonderful tutorials out there for making amber, some free (paroledepate.canalblog and polymer clay express, just to mention a couple) and others for a fee but well worth the price (Tory Hughes), but I still felt the beads could look more, well, "amberish"! Here is what I came to that I am really happy with.

The weather today is overcast yet look how these beads above seem to glow, compared to amber created using other techniques below:

using small amounts of clay to colour the translucent clay

using alcohol inks to colour the translucent clay

How to do it? Here we go: Make up a pale warm yellow translucent, then some deeper caramel translucents using Premo translucent and alcohol inks (sunflower, butterscotch, caramel, etc.) Thanks to Jay I've corrected the colours as follows: The yellow is Pinata Sunbright Yellow. All the clay used is Premo translucent (not frost, but I'm sure that would work as well - I find it has a slight bluish cast when buffed, cooling down the warm amber a bit. The other colors that I work with are Pinata's Havana Brown, Calabaza Orange and Tangerine, and Adirondack's Terra Cotta, Caramel, Butterscotch and Latte. I mix the colors gradually, adding a bit of a brighter color if needed to brighten a mix, or a bit of the browner colors to dull down a too bright mix. The base yellow is the Sunbright Yellow knocked back a teeny bit with the havana brown. Check the comments on this post to see more.

 Roll a ball of the pale yellow (I also roll it around my desktop, picking up bits of metal, dirt, clay)

 Roll the darker amber clay out on the thinnest setting possible. Tear off a small piece.

Stretch this piece out as thinly as possible. It will start to tear - that's ok.

Stretch this piece around the pale ball, tearing and patching as you go, leaving some areas pale.

 Smooth the edges of the dark, thin sheet to blend them into the pale clay and into each other.

Roll in your hands to smooth out any lumps and bumps. Pierce any air pockets.

Shape the way you want and pierce a hole, giving thought to where the weight of the piece will pull the side down and out of view.

Dig out scratches, holes, push in texture, dimple, pierce.

I'm practicing hammering rivets in 18 gauge blackened steel wire. Not bad, but I'll insert these into the bead, so curve the back side so it will stay embedded in the bead when baked.

Sand 400, 600, 800, 1,000 and buff on Foredom or with dremel. Patina with oil paint (burnt umber mixed with black), dry, buff again.

My polymer clay muse, The Arctic Fox, aka "The Geologist", says these finally look like amber!!! He should know! It's tough having to come up to his standards!