Chris Dembinski’s Polymer Clay Color Recipe Ebooks. Love them!

A few days ago I discovered Chris Dembinski’s amazing and helpful "Premo Spring/Summer 2013 Polymer Clay Color Recipes Ebook", available at her Etsy shop, CraftsbyChris. I had posted a question on the PCC Forum asking for polymer clay color formula ideas for using Premo clay to get an Emerald color to match the new Pantone's Emerald "color of the year 2013". Susan replied that she had purchased Chris' Ebooks for three years in a row and they had saved her hours and hours of experiment time. She referred to herself as a very happy customer with a notebook of samples she actually uses. So.........I purchased one and am SO PLEASED and inspired I want to purchase more!

Just SOME of the many colors in this one Ebook by Chris Dembinski

Chris has a number of different PDF Ebooks with recipe formulas to match the Pantone "hot color" picks for various seasons and years and with color recipes using various brands of polymer clay, including Premo, Kato and Fimo Classic. When you download the recipes you can choose to print them out in index cards size, or business card size. She also includes information and lovely pictures showing which of the Pantone colors in the specific formula book are likely to work well together. I was happy to find out that the formulas use the basic colors that Marie Segal used when she originally designed the Premo colors rather than any of the trendy "upstart" colors. They do use the "retired" Zinc Yellow and Cobalt Blue colors, but she lists three sources of where those colors may still be purchased via mail order.

Another surprise was that she creates so many gorgeous colors from so FEW colors. In the book I have she just choose the exactly CORRECT colors needed in the formula blends to create a veritable rainbow from only 8-9 basic colors total for the entire color palette.

Many of my colleagues know that I'm a color formula "junkie". When I first started my polymer clay journey 16 years ago I was paralyzed with fear to the point of inertia with the "learning curve" involved, to the point that ALL I did with the clay for the first year was to experiment with making color samples that were then taped to business cards with heat resistant double sided Tacky Tape before I cured them.

Whenever I begin a new project my favorite thing to do is to formulate the colors and crank out color samples as needed. That's my first step to planning out a new project and that first step often gets my Muse's attention (she LOVES color) and gets my creative juices flowing. Whenever I get "stuck" my favorite thing to do is to make color samples.....well, you get the idea why I call myself a color formula junkie. The samples now number around 12,000 at last "ball park" count several years ago, but I think it's more like 15,000.......which represent lots of "getting stucks".

That said, I think that Chris' color sample formulas have TOTALLY EXPANDED my color palette by adding small amounts of colors into formulas I never would have thought to try and producing new awesome colors. The fact that the colors coordinate with Pantone's color forecast is a huge added plus. To purchase: craftsbychris at Etsy