Learning how to mix your own clay colors is an essential skill if you are going to sell polymer clay earrings. The colors out of the packages are not very interesting and are very limited. Today I am going to share with you how to mix your own clay colors.

Clay Colors

The clay earring craze has taken the world by storm. It’s been amazing to see so many people enjoying this fun art. Some of the more skilled artists are making full time incomes by selling their clay earring creations online via Etsy or Instagram.

When I uploaded my very first DIY clay earrings video to youtube, I had no idea it would go viral so quickly.

But after making a couple of videos using the clay right out of the package, I quickly realized that my options were very limited and unless I wanted to make purple, pink, blue or white earrings – I needed to start figuring out how to mix my own custom polymer clay colors.

Mixing clay colors has quite the learning curve, so I’ll be explaining exactly how I do it, in this tutorial.

Choosing Good Clay

Not all clay is created equal. I have found that the sculpey brand gives me the best and most consistent results. I tried the off brand clay and it was really hard and difficult to mold and roll out. You can buy a really big multi-pack of sculpey clay on amazon for super cheap, like this, but if you want certain colors you can grab those at your local craft store.

My favorite clays to work with are sculpey premo and sculpey souffle. Souffle is the softest and easiest to work with, but premo comes in at a close second.

I would advise stearing clear of sculpey III, it’s difficult to work with and cracks often after baking.

Color Theory

Most of us have some basic color theory knowledge from our school years. So the same principles apply here. If you want a shade of green, a good place to start is yellow and blue. Looking for deeper green? Trying adding black a little at a time. You can find basic color theory charts online if you just google it.

I have found that the best way to mix colors is just trying it out. I always mix for the first time using very small circles of clay, that way if the colors turns out to be a bust, I haven’t wasted much clay.

If trial and error aren’t your thing, I have some very inexpensive color recipe bundles in my etsy shop. You get an instant pdf download and it walks you through the steps of mixing tons of different colors.

How To Mix Clay Colors

The first thing you need to do is decide the size of the cutter you will use to cut all your pieces. It needs to be the same cutter every time so you get the same results each time.

For instance, I always use this circular cutter you see with the above shapes cut out. And I always roll out my clay to the same thickness, the number “6” on my pasta machine.

So for this particular color recipe, I am using 5 parts blue, 2 parts yellow and 1/2 part black.