Polymer Color Recipes in an App? Why, Yes!

color MixrSo I spent my day at Sandy Camp in San Diego with a wonderfully enthusiastic group. I taught a mokume gane workshop with my little clayers coming up with some gorgeous results. However, I was too busy chatting and answering questions to direct my in-room photographer (thanks Mrs. Friesen!) to get some close up shots of the really wonderful color combinations and patterns that filled the tables. But what I did get, as did the rest of the lucky attendees, was a first look at a great new app created by our community’s own Nancy Ulrich. It may not seem like digital apps would have a place in hands-on craft, but this one was created just for clayers like you and me. Especially if you like color.

Well, that’s a silly thing to say. Who here doesn’t like color? But who here dreads trying to work up a color palette then figure out the color recipe for each color? If you raised a virtual hand in response to both those questions, then the ColorMixr app is going to be your new best friend! This is a purely polymer-clay-centric, color-picking, and palette-creating app. It was just released last night–it had just gone live in the Google Store hours before the demo I saw and the first Apple downloads happened by people in the room as Nancy presented it.

Here’s how it works: You take a photo, upload an image, or pick something you find online and feed it into the app . The app has little circles that will automatically pick out 5 colors to create a palette but you can also move over the image until each circle is over a color you want (see the screen shot upper left). You can also choose colors in a color wheel to adjust the color choices (screen shot upper right). Once you have your palette saved inot your palette library (screen shot lower left), tap on the palette to get a list of the color recipes for each color in it (screen shot lower right) … based off your specified brand of polymer! That’s pretty darn nifty! And know that Nancy has personally mixed and checked all 2000+ colors recipes available in this app–she even brought all the boxes of samples she made to prove it. Phew! She has been one busy lady!

We’ll be working on a review and a how-to-use-it article for the next issue, but in the meantime, download it for yourself and go play! It’s free to use for the next 30 days. If you like it, you can have this handy tool literally at your fingertips to capture any color sets you see out and about or online for a monthly membership ($3.99 with big discounts for pre-paid 6 & 12 month memberships) with regular color updates and/or new colors every week. Just search for “ColorMixr” (no ‘e’ in mixer) in the Google App store or Apple store.

Like this blog? Lend your support with a purchase of The Polymer Arts magazine and visit our partners:

     

     Print

Colour Breakthrough – Throwing Out the Wheel

June 10, 2015

colour dipticOne of our most unusual articles in the summer issue, the one we definitely spent the most time on getting just right for you all, is Tracy Holmes’ “Color Connections”. This is a color lesson and color mixing tutorial that throws out the color wheel and works with mixing and matching in three dimensions. The exercises are easy and fun, and you end up with a reusable and expandable color mixing cube. It will teach you the basics that will allow you to eventually move onto using Tracy’s soon-to-be-available color cards that will expand your potential palette to hundreds of easily mixed and matched colors.

The thing we didn’t have a lot of room for in the article was expanding on how to use it to choose colors, not just mix them. So here is a quick visual tutorial on how using this system works for creating color palettes.

Tracy’s partner, Dan Cormier, had made a ‘blurred lines’ blended veneer. He wanted to find an accent color, so he looked through Tracy’s cards, first to find colors that were in the blend, and then to find a complement color for one of those colors. He used the codes to find the yellow that was the exact opposite of the purple. Then he mixed clay to match that color and made a sheet to dieform through the hole in the baked blend veneer. The purple become another accent within the accent at the center of the bead.

Sounds easy, right? Well, it sounds like it could be easy if you understand the system. That’s what the article helps you understand—how colors are connected, not just by mapping them on a two-dimensional wheel, but through other colors as well, which is why understanding how color are truly related takes a three-dimensional model. Go ahead and go through the steps in the article for an easy first look at this idea, as well as getting a primer on a new way to look at color that can encompass our digital, printing and artistic color mixing worlds.

Tracy is not the only one out there promoting these new base color ideas, and you are likely to see this kind of color approach coming to you from a number of arenas. Right now Tracy’s Colour Cards are the only method I know of that will allow an artist to work with this newer approach to color mixing and matching in an easy and accessible way. To be one of the first to get the new cards when they arrive, sign up for Tracy’s newsletter, so you can get on the Kickstarter program, which will be your first and best chance to pre-order your own BreakThroughColour Colour Cards and Cubes. It’s not just exclusive to Kickstarter, but there are special ‘Project Backer’ prices for supporters.

Full details about limited edition packages and early bird deals will go out first to the new BreakThroughColour mailing list, so hop on over and take a second to sign up for the BreakThroughColour mailing list. And to get your Summer 2015 issue of The Polymer Arts, go to our website at www.thepolymerarts.com.

 

If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or an issue of The Polymer Arts magazine, as well as by supporting our advertising partners.

     TPA_McGuire_blog ad    sfxpaad-diffuse

Polymer Color Recipes in an App? Why, Yes!

October 9, 2015
Posted in ,

color MixrSo I spent my day at Sandy Camp in San Diego with a wonderfully enthusiastic group. I taught a mokume gane workshop with my little clayers coming up with some gorgeous results. However, I was too busy chatting and answering questions to direct my in-room photographer (thanks Mrs. Friesen!) to get some close up shots of the really wonderful color combinations and patterns that filled the tables. But what I did get, as did the rest of the lucky attendees, was a first look at a great new app created by our community’s own Nancy Ulrich. It may not seem like digital apps would have a place in hands-on craft, but this one was created just for clayers like you and me. Especially if you like color.

Well, that’s a silly thing to say. Who here doesn’t like color? But who here dreads trying to work up a color palette then figure out the color recipe for each color? If you raised a virtual hand in response to both those questions, then the ColorMixr app is going to be your new best friend! This is a purely polymer-clay-centric, color-picking, and palette-creating app. It was just released last night–it had just gone live in the Google Store hours before the demo I saw and the first Apple downloads happened by people in the room as Nancy presented it.

Here’s how it works: You take a photo, upload an image, or pick something you find online and feed it into the app . The app has little circles that will automatically pick out 5 colors to create a palette but you can also move over the image until each circle is over a color you want (see the screen shot upper left). You can also choose colors in a color wheel to adjust the color choices (screen shot upper right). Once you have your palette saved inot your palette library (screen shot lower left), tap on the palette to get a list of the color recipes for each color in it (screen shot lower right) … based off your specified brand of polymer! That’s pretty darn nifty! And know that Nancy has personally mixed and checked all 2000+ colors recipes available in this app–she even brought all the boxes of samples she made to prove it. Phew! She has been one busy lady!

We’ll be working on a review and a how-to-use-it article for the next issue, but in the meantime, download it for yourself and go play! It’s free to use for the next 30 days. If you like it, you can have this handy tool literally at your fingertips to capture any color sets you see out and about or online for a monthly membership ($3.99 with big discounts for pre-paid 6 & 12 month memberships) with regular color updates and/or new colors every week. Just search for “ColorMixr” (no ‘e’ in mixer) in the Google App store or Apple store.

Like this blog? Lend your support with a purchase of The Polymer Arts magazine and visit our partners:

     

     Print

Read More

Colour Breakthrough – Throwing Out the Wheel

June 10, 2015
Posted in

colour dipticOne of our most unusual articles in the summer issue, the one we definitely spent the most time on getting just right for you all, is Tracy Holmes’ “Color Connections”. This is a color lesson and color mixing tutorial that throws out the color wheel and works with mixing and matching in three dimensions. The exercises are easy and fun, and you end up with a reusable and expandable color mixing cube. It will teach you the basics that will allow you to eventually move onto using Tracy’s soon-to-be-available color cards that will expand your potential palette to hundreds of easily mixed and matched colors.

The thing we didn’t have a lot of room for in the article was expanding on how to use it to choose colors, not just mix them. So here is a quick visual tutorial on how using this system works for creating color palettes.

Tracy’s partner, Dan Cormier, had made a ‘blurred lines’ blended veneer. He wanted to find an accent color, so he looked through Tracy’s cards, first to find colors that were in the blend, and then to find a complement color for one of those colors. He used the codes to find the yellow that was the exact opposite of the purple. Then he mixed clay to match that color and made a sheet to dieform through the hole in the baked blend veneer. The purple become another accent within the accent at the center of the bead.

Sounds easy, right? Well, it sounds like it could be easy if you understand the system. That’s what the article helps you understand—how colors are connected, not just by mapping them on a two-dimensional wheel, but through other colors as well, which is why understanding how color are truly related takes a three-dimensional model. Go ahead and go through the steps in the article for an easy first look at this idea, as well as getting a primer on a new way to look at color that can encompass our digital, printing and artistic color mixing worlds.

Tracy is not the only one out there promoting these new base color ideas, and you are likely to see this kind of color approach coming to you from a number of arenas. Right now Tracy’s Colour Cards are the only method I know of that will allow an artist to work with this newer approach to color mixing and matching in an easy and accessible way. To be one of the first to get the new cards when they arrive, sign up for Tracy’s newsletter, so you can get on the Kickstarter program, which will be your first and best chance to pre-order your own BreakThroughColour Colour Cards and Cubes. It’s not just exclusive to Kickstarter, but there are special ‘Project Backer’ prices for supporters.

Full details about limited edition packages and early bird deals will go out first to the new BreakThroughColour mailing list, so hop on over and take a second to sign up for the BreakThroughColour mailing list. And to get your Summer 2015 issue of The Polymer Arts, go to our website at www.thepolymerarts.com.

 

If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or an issue of The Polymer Arts magazine, as well as by supporting our advertising partners.

     TPA_McGuire_blog ad    sfxpaad-diffuse

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