Colored Pencil Transfers and More

Were you intrigued yesterday by the possibilities of using colored pencil? Grab yourself a big box of Prismacolor pencils (or a comparable brand) and start doodling shapes and swirls, flowers and faces, tendrils and textures … anything you can think of. And yes, you can do this even if you don’t have a lot of drawing experience, and you’ll probably do it quite well. When you are playing with colored pencils, you are working primarily with the color (which you already do with polymer, right?) and can let the idea that you must sketch something particular fall away. Just let go and see what you have. Then pick a section of what you’ve drawn, cut it out and transfer it onto polymer. Quick and easy visual texture! From that you can cut, stamp, layer, embed, etc just like you would any other surface treated polymer sheet.

Another way to transfer you colored pencil masterpieces is to float liquid polymer clay (LPC) on the paper, bake or use a heat gun to cure it and then remove the paper from the cured LPC by peeling and using water to remove any that remains. The neat thing about using the LPC is that the image will have translucency wherever the pencil is light or absent. This can be applied to other surface-treated polymer clay sheets for intriguing layering of colors and textures.

Julia Sober used the LPC transfer of a colored pencil drawing laid over silver leaf to create this beautiful box.

The silver leaf does give the colors extra luminescence often associated with enamel work, which is probably why she called her application faux enamel. But other applications such as a pearl clay backing for light colored sketches or black for bright, densely colored drawings could be quite impressive as well. Once you have the LPC transfers done, you can hold them up to all kinds of backgrounds and see what kind of effect you have. Bring out your inner child with the colored pencils, and just play.