Today - faux jade

If you hadn't noticed yet, I am trying to alternate the subjects of my tutorials so there will be a little bit for everybody every day.

 So today is one of the promises I made: faux jade.

And it's not just making the jade but also making a piece with it on Sunday in the "Clay with me Sunday" series.

Just as a short explanation if you are not familiar with jade. "Jade" is the common name of actually two different minerals, that have a quite similar appearance: jadeite and nephrite.
They're both metamorphic rocks (that means the original rock, under certain conditions, like pressure and temperature, has suffered modifications at structural level).

Of the two, jadeite is the most precious. Nephrite can only be found in shades of green and one white variant that the Chinese call "mutton fat" while jadeite can be found in many colors and many shades of these colors: green, yellow, red, pink, blue, etc.

The most precious jadeite is the strong green one - of the color that is actually named "jade green".

I did not go for that though because of the danger that is always lurking when working with polymer clay: the danger that your pieces will look like cheap plastic. Sometimes it can happen even with your best intensions. So I tried to avoid that. A few examples of jade - both jadeite and nephrite:

"mutton fat" nephrite from Nepal

nephrite cabochons. notice the variety of greens

Burmese jadeite. One of the types I like to make a faux of

Myanmar lavender jadeite

yellow jadeite

various colors jadeite pieces from Guatemala

imperial jade. Can be more expensive than diamonds.

I will make today a faux nephrite and a faux jadeite. At least that's the idea. Then at the end of the tutorial will be a poll for people to choose which of them they want to see made in a jewelry piece Sunday. 

Nephrite is easier to "faux" than jadeite. In my opinion, of all the jadeite kinds, the only one that is suitable to "faux" in polymer clay without running the risk of looking like cheap plastic is the "mottled" jadeite.

Like this one

Or like the Burmese one on the list. Of course you can play with the hues of green, but the rule is: more translucency, lighter green. Less translucency, darker green. The mottled is actually divided in two kinds: translucent and opaque. On one you can shine a flashlight through, the other you can't, really, you can see there's a light on the other side but it's very diffuse.

The translucency is another reason why you can't really get good quality jadeite in "faux". You can't get that glass-like translucency that the imperial jade has.



Anyway, I'm almost done. Last batch in the oven. Sorry it took so long but I also experimented on something, you'll see.

Will update later with teaser and link to tutorial. I'll try to keep the tutorial under 15 minutes for faster upload. As in, two and a half hours instead of 5-6 hours

Sigh.