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Tuesday, July 3, 2018

NeoPixels Behind Air Dry Clay

Tried a new material for diffusing NeoPixels and making jewelry - air dry clay. It didn't work out like I hoped, but the experiments were successful enough that I will continue to play with it.

Air-dry clay is very easy to work with. I think it handles more like real clay than polymer-clays like Sculpey. And you don't have to bake it, just let it dry (a real plus during the summer months).

I also use it to make quick molds and impressions.

I had some white clay (from Polyform) left over from another project, and I don't like to mix partially dried clay back into the main blob. So I decided to press some gears and cogs into the leftover clay to make a quick Steampunk jewelry pendant. With some paint and embellishments, this is a good technique to get a fun surface texture for jewelry.

I thought it would be translucent enough to make a good diffuser for a NeoPixel pendant. But the clay is actually fairly opaque at anything more than a millimeter thickness. That is way too thin to make jewelry with because air-dry clay is brittle and breaks easily (a backer board or thick parts are best for jewelry).


Steampunk jewelry pendant made with air dy clay and NeoPixels
You can see that the NeoPixel lights only show through where the clay is very thin. Luckily, the rest of the pendant is thick and makes for a strurdy piece of Steampunk jewelry.


But I had accidently made some of the impressions from the gear so deep that the light from the NeoPixels shined through quite nicely. A few even poked all the way through. The rest of the piece are very thick however, so the pendant is sturdy. Overall, it creates a nice effect.

I need to paint the surfaces to make it prettier, but somehow leave the indentions unpainted. It might take a few tries to get something attractive. But air-dry clay is cheap and quick to work with. So I can try a lot of different techniques cheaply and quickly.

Also, I know that polymer clays have a wide variety of translucency. And my diffusing experiment with 3d printed NeoPixel jewelry proves that even PLA has different light transmitting qualities. So there might be other air-dry clay brands that work much better with technique. I'll keep you updated.

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