Inclusions in Clay

I have been playing around with polymer clay for nearly 20 years now. Wow! After all that time you would think I've seen and done it all. Hardly! There have been weeks.....even months.... that I haven't even touched my clay. And with it's versatility, new ideas are always being discovered.

What I've been playing around with the past 2 days is certainly nothing new. I'm not the originator of these ideas. Others have been adding "things" to translucent clay for years. But I wanted to try for myself and share the results.

First up, dryer lint..... Yes, that's right.....  Dryer lint.  Now most of the time I'm fighting the battle of keeping my clay clean. Anyone who has ever worked with polymer clay can tell you....it's like a lint magnet! No matter how clean my work surface and hands I'm always picking little pieces of lint or cat hair off of my clay. So why in the world would I intentionally mix it in? Because, just look at the results.

At the top is the lint. The bottom right in uncured translucent clay with the lint mixed in. The little owl figure is the cured piece. 

The top is some green dryer lint. The bottom left shows what the uncured clay looks like. The pebble on the right is after curing and sanding.

Isn't that little owl cute? Looks like carved stone, right? And what about my green pebble? It reminds me of a polished river rock.

Well, while I was experimenting I decided to try out a couple other ideas.

This little bird was made by adding blue crayon shavings to some translucent clay. I love the speckles!

I mixed in some bright orange play sand and got a gold fish!

These simple little animal totems are so much fun to make! I'm not sure what I will do with them yet. Perhaps I'll drill holes through them and turn them into beads. Or maybe another idea will come to mind. But I do believe I will try out some other colors of both the crayons and the sand. I do love colors! So.....off to the work table! Until next time........