How to Create Faux Wood with Polymer Clay

Kira: Hi everybody, welcome back to Polymer Clay TV. Today, we’re going to use marbling techniques to create a faux wood look. And we did a couple of different things and we need some picture frames that might be nice, so we were thinking maybe to give to a guy since we do so many girly pretty projects. So get out your different colors of beige, ecru all the kind of brown colors and— Ilysa: Let’s get start. Kira: So today, we’re going to be showing you how to make the faux wood design, and basically what you’re going to need is clay and a few different colors. We have ecru, burnt sienna, or raw sienna and burnt umber. Ilysa: Alright. Kira: Okay, and then this is a raw sienna and ecru mixed, so that we can get a little bit of a variation. And if you come over to Polymer Clay classroom, we’re going to show how to make this one from start to finish with the background and the faux wood in lace. And then right now, what I’m going to be showing you is how to make this kind of faux wood sheet. So what you need to do is just start with your snicks rolled out to about the same length and just stack them together. And this is basically a variation of the marbling technique so you’re just going to squeeze them together and compress them and roll them out and then give them a twist. And then I like to roll mine back up into a ball and roll them out again. So you have to give them a little squeeze to make sure they stick and roll and twist. And just do it until you start seeing what you would call like the veining in the wood. Ilysa: And you want to just seem until you get the right texture of wood in and to achieve that look, just look at a piece of wood and see the grain of it. You know you have a better idea of what wood looks like if you’re looking at a piece of wood. Kira: Right, so I would say for this technique you’re going to end up wanting to use your poster machine to give a nice sheet of it, so I’m just going to roll it through the poster machine until I like how it looks and I’m going to make it a little thinner. One side loose looking better than the other so that’s the side that it’ll be on the outside when I fold it up. That’s starting to look nice so you can just stretch it with your hands a little bit and then eventually you’re going to stack because you don’t want this to mix together, that’s not the point. So right there, that’s nice, that’s starting to look like a nice wood. So now I’m just going to stretch it out. Ilysa: You do the that very different from me. Kira: Take it through a four. I started with a small amount of clay, so I’m getting a small amount of wood grain, but that’s enough for my little project. But for the frame that Ilysa made you will definitely want to start with more clay. Do you want to show. Ilysa: Sure. Kira: How you do it? Do you need the poster machine? Ilysa: No. Kira: Okay. Ilysa: I never used it. I mean I just kind of took my colors and I like to work with four colors as well, that just good amount for me. And what I do is I can kind of butt them together and I fold them in on themselves, and roll it. And then I fold it again and roll it, and you just kind of creating that same kind of effect that Kira did, but it is just rolling instead. I used the poster machine to roll out the flat sheet to put on to my picture frame. That’s what I used before but for this technique I just kept squeezing it back together. And then you can give it a little twist. So she did that too but you know I just kind of fold them onto it itself and it will start to create that same kind of wood grain pattern. And you just play with it until you like the results because every time it will come out different. It’s not going to be the same every time. So let me just roll this out so you can see how it looks. So you don’t need your poster machine to create this wood look either. Kira: You can just use? Ilysa: Strips and keep rolling it until you get your desired look. Kira: That’s so funny how we work so different. Ilysa: I know. It is. Kira: So have fun with it and be sure to come to Polymer Clay classroom where you can see how we made this frame. Thanks for joining us.