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In this tutorial I will show you the results of coloring lumina clay and what works and what doesnt.

On the package of lumina it says you can color it with acrylic paint, oil paint, colored hearty clay to create custom colors.

Since Im never one to try the conventional lol I decided to first try it with ink. I wanted to see if using ink it would help increase the translucent nature of lumina clay.

I added about 2 drops of ink to a little chunk of clay and it blended easily and smoothly. Then as I was blending the clay after a couple of minutes I started to feel the clay dry out a bit.

So I added a bit of water
*and I do mean just a bit just a tiny tap from my finger tip was a bit much
When you add water to lumina it does get a bit tacky which is actually good because it helps the clay blend smoothly. I found that after I add water for about a minute or so after I can let it rest or keep blending it the tackyness will go away. I will be left with a perfectly smooth non dry piece of lumina clay. I really love that part about it.

When you do add water though, a very tiny bit may stick to your fingers but you can just flake it of as it dries fast on the skin. Here is a picture below for you to see what I mean

Now when I got back to blending I started to see like white residue all over the clay. At first I thought it was because I thought it was starting to dry out but the clay was still soft but it had this powdery residue all over it.

It wasnt until later in the day I realized that was just residue from the alcohold evaporating from the “alcohol inks” duh sometimes the answer is so simple lol

so after I let the paper thin sheet of lumina dry I just wiped some water on it and the white residue came right off

oh and if you’re wondering about the hearts you can see the answer HERE

I then decided to mix in some acrylic paint. The paint mixes in beautifully of course no residue with the acrylic paint.

The only problem I had with mixing in paint was when I was trying to make the lumina clay red. It has nothing to do with lumina but more so on the paint I was using.

Im going to share it with you because pigment strength is really one of the most important things we need to have to achieve the perfect color you’re after.

Most colors are really easy but RED you really have to have a paint with alot of pigment.

I was using ceramcoat acrylic red paint at first.

now mind you this is like at 2 AM haha yes Im a night owl at times. So I couldnt really make out the colors but I knew that red color just didnt look right. So when I started mixing to my surprise hmmm a pastel pink ball of clay grrrrrr .

so then I thought I’ll just add some more “red paint” that should make it red right. hmmmm

NOOOOOOOOOOOO….. Hot Pink…. now while sitting in my dark craft room barely lit by a glowing yellow light im thinking this doesnt make any sense since my other red paints always turned my clay red and not pink.

dont worry I’ll get it in the next 5 minutes haha

Sidenote * If you look in the picture above you’ll notice some specks of pink in the clay. Thats because when you first mix in the paint once you got it fully mixed the clay will dry out some as the paint is drying. At this step you’ll notice the dry paint on your fingers … well dont make the mistake that I did go and wash the dried paint from your hands. What I did was I put some water on my hands while I still HAD the dried paint on it and really all I did was mix in dry specks of paint into the clay. So make sure you dont do that.

Wash the dry paint off and then you can add additional water to the clay to further blend the clay and avoid the specks.

Here is a piece of clay done the right way… see no specks of dried paint

anyway , this is still like like 2 minutes later, theres still like 3 minutes left before I get the tada moment that lets me create truly red clay haha

so now Im rolling out the pink clay still a bit sad its not red but hey its pink and who doesnt love pink

as you can see even with acrylic paint when rolled thin its still extremely translucent.

here is a different chunk of clay showing you the different depths and that its only translucent when rolled thin

here is the same clay just lying down with no light shining through

the beautiful thing about lumina is when the light shines through it.

So anyway yayyy we are now at minute 5 and I get my DUH moment and I realize that I really should be using my artist grade paints with lots of PIGMENT

cuz the truth is ceramcoat red is not really red its really more like magenta which is why my clay turned pink

so i took out some of my strong oil paints and decided to mix those in and see would it turn red and of course it did

as you can see in the picture my oil paints are actually red and not pink like the ceramcoat “red”

here you can the pieces of clay and how they came out. The ball on the left was made using the cadmium red and the ball on the right was made using the crimson red and the pink sheet on the bottom was using the ceramcoat red

Hope these tips help you out and now on to PART THREE OF THIS LUMINA TUTORIAL

and dont forget to read PART 1 which is my LUMINA REVIEW

and now here is a new addition to the lumina reviews

PART 4: Lumina Waterproof Experiment

Tags: acrylic paint, clay, coloring, lumina, oil paint, pigment