Making Sculpey Slate

I met up with Wappellious at a recent con and we talked about slate bases. I've been experimenting with the milliput slate techniques, but what I've wanted to do is give a better layered effect. What we ended up thinking about was sandwiching Sculpey and Super Sculpey. As they have different properties, they'll break in more realistic ways.

Roll out two approximately equivalent amounts of Sculpey and Super Sculpey. Stack them together, and continue to roll them flat and sandwich them together so you end up with several layers of Sculpey and Super Sculpey.

Once you get enough layers (I think 16, or 4 folds) bake it in the oven like the directions say. Try not to make the sculpey too thin, as it won't break but instead bend. You can always stick a knife blade and separate layers apart if you want a thinner piece after it bakes.

Break apart a piece. If the sculpey bends rather than breaks, you can stick it in the freezer or ice water for a little while to make it more brittle. You might be able to peel apart layers with your fingernail. By removing parts of single layers you can exaggerate the "slate" appearance.

Now you have a good piece you can use however you need to; the piece below is a quick drybrush job to demonstrate how the slate will look painted. This example piece is smaller than 2 cm x 4 cm.

One benefit of this method is that it's quick -- you can speed up the cooling period by dropping the sculpey in cold water. You can probably have working slate in 30 minutes, unlike the hours required if you use milliput. Also, one benefit is that this looks more like slate than the milliput method.

Good luck!