Premo colors, color mixing, etc.

[epicycledesigns]

Hello all!
I've been working with Premo! for a few years now, and love it.

One thing I've been frustrated by is the lack of good skin tone available -- I make figurines that are a bit cartoonish, and thus their skin tone is typically a bit pinker, to make it stand out.

Beige is isn't nearly colorful enough, and all the pinks are much too pink in my experience. Do any of you have a tried-and-true skin tone mixture that works for you? I've been frustrated lately by having to mix and remix colors to get the right skintone when I run out.

Also -- and I realize this is a bit of an obscure, objective question -- how pink is Premo's "candy pink?" The online pictures don't do me much good. I have blush to compare it to.

Thanks, all!

[Former_Member]

What I do is mix a tiny bit of pink with some tan, sculpy might have some tan/pink colors to!:) hope I helped:)

[epicycledesigns]

Thanks, Rachel!
Anyone else?

[Former_Member]

No tips on skin tone, I've always blended my own out of Fimo, but Candy Pink is quite bright, almost hot pink.

[Former_Member]

I don't like the beige premo at all. And I am pretty terrible at mixing colors, so I switched to Fimo beige, it is perfect for my little chibi charms.

[BlueTurtleCrafts]

This shop has a lot of great color recipes,

www.etsy.com/shop/craftsbychris

I bet she has some skin tones

[epicycledesigns]

Thanks, guys. I may have to look into the FIMO beige -- I'm tired of mixing and mixing and mixing skin tone. Eventually I might remember to write down my formula, too -- which would certainly help.
Rhoda, thanks for the heads up on the Candy Pink -- I thought I had seen it in Michaels once, but couldn't remember if it went the way of cotton candy, or bubblegum. . .
Kathy, I'm off to check off her shop. Thank you for the tip!

[Former_Member]

It really will help to write down the recipe for your skin color the next time you are able. Any color you create actually. Once you have your recipe you'll just grab the correct amounts of the needed colors and condition them together. Re-creating the color as you condition. A big time saver because there is no more guess work.

I use a combination of Fimo lt peach flesh, Premo white and original Sculpy (which is very beige) and mix up large batches at one time. I throw the correct amounts of each into the food processor I use for clay. Not only does the food processor cut the clay into very tiny little crumbles the size of little BB's and smaller, the act of processing also starts warming and conditioning the clay. I then grab handfuls of the warm clay and condition it a little more until it is well blended. I store it food storage containers and its ready whenever I need it.

My biggest problem is that even though creating recipes is a big time saver. Sometimes I forget and its usually the time that I create a really awesome color and can't remember how I did it!

When I remember I create a little extra of the color. Roll it through the pasta machine and cut a square of it using a 1 1/2" cutter, put a hole through it in the corner and bake. When cooled, I write the recipe on the back .

[epicycledesigns]

Judith, thanks for the tips!
I always MEAN to write my recipe down. . . I just never seem to get around to it (adding a bit of this and a bit of that, I come up with nearly the same color I always have, it just takes a while).
I really like your idea of doing the recipe on the back of a baked sample. I think I will certainly have to implement that one!

[exZuberant]

Maybe this will help, Tabitha. When I want to mix a very specific color, I condition the clay with my pasta machine and roll out the various colors in sheets of the same thickness. Then I use a small cutter to cut several circles from each sheet. That way I have a lot of little circles that are exactly the same amount of clay. Then I start mixing them. It's a lot quicker and easier to mix small amounts of clay than to mess with large quantities. The really cool thing with this technique is that, once you have the color you want, you can go back and count the number of circles you have left versus the number of holes in the clay sheets, and you will know the exact recipe. Then you can replicate it easily. If you used 8 little circles of beige, one circle of pink, and two circles of white (for example), you can use a whole block of beige clay, 1/8 of a block of pink, and 1/4 of a block of white the next time you want to mix a batch. I like Judith's suggestion of making a sample and writing the recipe on the back.

Like you, I mix most of my colors without recipes, but I don't make figures where I want to use the same colors over and over. Since I am an architect, I do have a "blueprint blue" recipe that I wrote down for some pieces I don't have in my shop yet.

Good luck!

[epicycledesigns]

Oh! Circles! Dawn, how smart that is! I think I may have to work on some circle-cutting, recipe making today. Thank you all so much, all these tips have been SO helpful.