pardo-baked-colors
Squares are baked clay.  Circles on top are raw clay.

Pardo Professional Art Clay has a small, well-conceived color range.

I’ve found that the colors in the photo above, plus black and white, should be all that are needed to mix any color. The blue is a little dark and shows its color better if mixed with a little white.  You can mix orange from red and yellow that’s as vibrant as the packaged color when baked. You can also mix turquoise from green and cyan.

They offer a couple more colors in Pardo Art Clay.  There’s a fairly large array of colors in Pardo Jewellery Clay (the English spelling), including glitter and glow-in-the-dark.  They also offer some translucent colors and metallics.

All of these swatches were baked at the manufacturer’s recommended temperature in two aluminum baking tins, one inverted as a lid with two small ceramic tiles inside.

CLAY FIRMNESS

Pardo Art Clay is the firmest polymer clay I’ve tried.  It becomes flexible when conditioned, but is still generally firmer than other clays.  Pardo Jewellrey Clay is softer.

Pardo Art Clay can become a pile of crumbs if not conditioned very gently.  See the video below for one method that works.  It involves running single slices of clay through the pasta machine and gradually narrowing the setting until it’s at the very narrowest before doubling or folding the slices.

Ginger Davis Allman offers another method that includes hand-conditioning: How to Condition Pardo Translucent Art Clay.

MIXED COLORS

In the photo at the top, mixtures are indicated by lines drawn between colors.

In the top and bottom rows, I mixed colors that were visually halfway between the packaged colors in the second row.   They weren’t mixed half and half because some colors are stronger than others.

The primaries of magenta, yellow and turquoise mix quite well to make secondary colors, as shown in the top row.

WHITE & TRANSLUCENT

pardo-white-translucent
Squares are baked clay. Circles on top are raw clay.
pardo-baking-duration
Squares and rectangle are baked clay. Circle on top is raw clay.

White Pardo stays nice and white when baked.  It grayed slightly when baked multiple times.

Translucent is very translucent, almost transparent. It’s amazing. Pardo can get some small air bubbles from conditioning, but it doesn’t seem prone to plaquing.

COLORS THAT DARKENED WHEN BAKED

Colors that darkened a little when baked:

  • green
  • magenta

The rest of the colors remained quite true.   Pardo colors shift the least of all the polymer clays offering primary and secondary colors.  That may be because its recommended baking temperature is only 248˚.

COMPENSATING FOR COLOR SHIFTING

pardo-mixed-w-white
Squares are baked clay. Circles in upper right are raw clay mixed with white or yellow as indicated.  Circles in lower left are packaged raw clay.

I compensated for color shifting by adding white or yellow.  These came very close to the raw clay color, except the green became more of a true green rather than the blue/green of the packaged color.

I haven’t tried adding translucent to lighten colors, but it may work well because Pardo’s translucent is impressive.

Test these methods of compensating by baking small swatches before making a project.

DOUBLE-BAKING NOT MUCH BENEFIT TO PARDO ART CLAY 

Pardo has a nice, flat surface when baked with occasional small air bubbles. The translucent may have fewer tiny bubbles when only baked once, which is contrary to my results with other clays.  The white may stay a little whiter when double-baked.  Other than that, there’s no real difference between double-baking and only baking once.

pardo-double-vs-single-baking
Top row baked once for 30 minutes at 200˚, cooled, then baked again for 10 minutes at about 248˚. Bottom row baked only once for 30 minutes at 248˚. Both baked in a preheated oven in an aluminum baking box containing two ceramic tiles.

 

pardo-double-vs-single-baking-closeup
Top row double-baked. Bottom row baked only once.  No obvious plaquing in either.  Both have nice flat surfaces with very few small bumps.

AVAILABILITY

I haven’t seen Pardo available in local retail stores. I order it online from  Poly Clay Play.

CONCLUSION

Pardo green and magenta shift slightly when baked. This can be corrected with a little white. In my opinion, it’s the polymer clay with the fewest problems when baked.

White stays quite white.  Translucent is the clearest of all translucent polymer clays currently available.

Pardo Art Clay is a quite firm clay that needs gentle conditioning.  It would be interesting to try Pardo Jewellery Clay which is a bit softer to see if it performs as well as Pardo Art Clay. It’s supposed to have “a fine pearl shimmer.”

Official Pardo site: http://www.viva-decor.net/viva-decor-2014/index.php/en/mpaw-en/pardo-clay.html

P.S. I bought all these products myself and received nothing from the manufacturers.