Tutorial: Tinting Sculpey Clay

A few months ago I got REALLY into silicone molds because I wanted to be able to make my own little flower decorations for clips. I started with what was available to me. My mom had some nude colored sculpey, so that's what we used. Well, we thought, "Oh, we will just paint them afterward."....bad idea. It's too much work. Then I discovered the clear epoxy resin and just tried that the other day. SO great. I use the Easycast brand. I love it. I bought their dyes too but I'm going to try using acrylic paint. Fun! Here is my first attempt with the resin. 

Tip: Don't use the clay on the more intricate molds like the fleur de lis. WAY hard to press it in. I mean, it's doable, but hard.

Tip: Get lots of molds. This stuff has to dry for many hours and even then it's not really hard. Anyway, you can take them out after about 12 or so hours, but it would be nice to be able to pour lots at one time. I made like an ounce of resin and I still had some left over. You don't want to waste it. 

So then I got to thinking...there has to be a way to dye the sculpey. I googled it and voila! There's a way. So here it is. =)

This is what I used. It is a nude color.

 Get a little amount and work it into a "patty."

 Take a sharpie and dot it all over the top. I did dots because dragging it just made the clay stick to the tip. You get a lot more ink out by dotting.

 Fold it over and flatten it out again. Repeat the dotting.

 Keep folding it over and you start to get the marbled effect.

 Mix it all up and once you get the color you want, you're finished!

 These are the colors I made and the sharpies I used to make them. 

Here are all of the totally fun cabochons I made with my tinted clay! I hope you will try it and have as much fun as I did.

P.S. You bake the clay according to the box and I baked mine IN the molds! This keeps them from getting distorted because they are hard when you get them out of the oven. 

=) I get my molds from MoldMuse by Silicone Molds on Etsy