Faux metals with Swellegant are swell!

Hy-dee-ho, Blog, I'm here to share a festival of stuff I made this past weekend using the most boffo new product line from polymer clay artist Christi Friesen. The line is called "Swellegant," and consists of a bunch of faux metal paints, patina-izing concoctions, and dye inks. The best way to demonstrate what this stuff can do is to simply show you what I made! Let's proceed, Blog...

To begin, you just have to make and bake something out of polymer clay. For example, this cat sculpture. I'm not a very good sculptor so it took me a long time, but in the end I created this out of brown Fimo clay (sorry it's blurry--the cat apparently cast a spell on my camera).

Once the piece cools, you paint it with one or more of the metal paints. I used a combination of iron for the head and upper body, and copper for the rest, sort of blended together in the middle.

I used one of the patina treatments (tiffany green/rust) then to make the iron portions look old and rusty, and the copper portions to turn green in random spots. Then on the iron part I also used coffee, black and white dye and a little bronze paint. The result? This:

Can you believe this piece is made of polymer clay, Blog? I barely can, and I made it!

I also made a fish pin, this time from silver clay. This will let you see the difference between silver clay and the silver Swellegant treatment. Before:

As you see, I embedded a stone in the clay. So, I applied silver Swellegant, followed by darkening patina and green dye. Result:

I also made a small wall clock for our powder room. I covered a piece of sheet metal with brown clay and textured it. You see it here with the rocks and the wristwatch face I planned to affix to the piece:

I painted the base copper, then glued on the rocks. The clock is wired in so you can take it off to replace the battery. Yes, I'm that clever, Blog. Finally, I used the tiffany green/rust patina, and white, black, and kelly green dye. The after pic:

I kinda love it. I knew it wasn't folly to collect rocks all my life.

Lastly, another use for my rock collection. I used five polished stones mounted in a sort of organic pod design in brown clay, molding the chain right in:

This piece was painted with brass Swellegant and then treated with the gold-green-verdigris patina. The brass really matches well with the chain.

The fifth metal paint is bronze, and I'm already super stoked to try it too, Blog. Kudos and thanks to the brilliant Christi Friesen for developing this product line! My only regret about polymer clay to date is that there was no really convincing way to use it for a metal look. Now it's pretty much the bee's knees in every possible way!