Glazing crazy

The other night I had the bug for taking my beads to the next level. I have been putting the glazing off mainly due to my own laziness. (My old paintbrushes were up in the loft and despite all good intentions, I had not actually managed to encourage my legs to take me up there.)

So I decided to put an end to this procrastination and retrieve the brushes. Still as good as new, I picked a medium sized brush and painted the glaze on my beads. The Sculpey glaze had been sitting there for some time, and was at last unleashed. Instantly when you apply the glaze you can see a wonderful transformation. The glaze really does make a difference. I am not sure if I mixed it up enough, as the bottle suggested, and found that when the glaze had dried after about 30 mins, it didn't seem as shiny as when first applied.

To make matters difficult I have no polystyrene, otherwise I could have put the beads on cocktail sticks and dangled them by poking the sticks in the polystyrene. So to get around this problem I applied the glaze to one side of the bead and had to wait for it to dry before applying to the other side. Of course impatience meant that it's hard to stop myself from messing with the bead before they dried, and I wonder if most of it ended up on my fingers rather than on the actual beads!

Mosaic pillow beads

I have been determined to finally produce something which I feel proud to wear, and so gazing down at the various canes I have so far created, I decided to make some beads. Over the past few weeks I have seen some rather nice examples of pillow beads on the internet. The process is manageable, if yet untested, and so I took the plunge. It is easy enough to make pillow beads - just roll a small ball of scrap clay for the inside and add two square slices of clay to each side and press the edges and corners together. I used 1/2cm pieces of the marbled log I had made previously which was about 1cm in diameter. I then cut these into half because I found that the clay was too much for the interior of the bead. In other words, that's 1/4 cm of the log piece for the interior.


I was pleasantly surprised at how nice the pillow beads looked in the end. I'm not saying that they were perfect by any means. I managed to smudge one while trying to pinch the ends. It also took quite a lot of squeezing around the edges and corners to get them into a uniform shape. But not bad for a first attempt.

I baked these in my oven in the usual way (by hanging on cocktail sticks) and when they cooled I decided to string them using the elastic cord my friend had lent to me, and using some random beads I had bought from Ebay. The result was a very pleasing bracelet, which (I admit) brought a smile to my face.

Trying the scrap flower bead idea

So following on from that flower bead idea yesterday, I decided to give it a go last night. I followed the process from memory because I hadn't printed off the instructions, but it wasn't that complicated. First I conditioned the old Natasha bead clay I had left sitting in my plastic box and marbled it so that I had a log of mainly red, black and white clay. I decided on the safe side to stick to this colour scheme and so I chose to use my orchid flower cane to experiment with.

The first task is to put thin slices of the flower cane onto the log in a random pattern. I admit that having more than one flower cane in different sizes would have helped but I was just experimenting. The log had a diameter of about 1cm. I then cut pieces from the log using a ruler to ensure they were the same size.

I tried initially to make round beads (this is my comfort zone) by squeezing the ends of the logs together to try to wrap the outside over the inside and then rolled in my hands to get the bead shape. This worked quite well and is fairly easy to do. I then tried making square shaped beads by again squeezing the ends of the logs together and pinching the corners. These didn't seem to turn out so well and I ended up leaving them as scrap. I repeated the round bead process using a blue marble log and my blue flower cane.

What I am left with is some beads which I'm partly happy with and partly not. What ruined it for me personally is that some of the inside pattern from the log remained outside during the rolling. Perhaps I should have pinched the ends a bit better. Also by making the beads round the slices that had been cut in half during the slicing of the log looked odd on the final beads, making me think it is probably better just to add the slices after. For that reason I think this is definitely a technique for square beads not round. On a positive note, it shows how effective it is to add slices to beads and have an interesting background on the base bead other than, for example, white. I also think that choice of colour is important to ensure variation between background and bead slice.

Idea for covering beads

As I've already mentioned, my latest problem has been deciding how to get the cane designs onto the finished beads. Aside from this I still have a lot of scrap clay and that in itself has been troubling me. Am I merely wasting all this clay and not producing anything to be proud of?

So a revelation came to me while having a surf on the internet, when I found Ponsawan Sila's blog post about making square flower beads and I couldn't quite believe what a great idea it was. It basically involves using scrap clay and marbling it. (Great, this I can handle!) Form a long log with the scrap clay. Then use your flower cane slices and place them on the log and slice into equal pieces. Then shape the sliced logs into square beads.

I was stunned by how something so simple can create something so effective and professional. I am so glad I found because it has raised renewed inspiration and that is definitely most needed.

The blog post includes a slideshow which is very handy too.

Chats with a close friend

Today I have been chatting with my friend Pat about my progress in polymer clay-land. He is always very keen to see my latest creations. I admitted that I have felt quite frustrated by my lack of skills, because although I am only just learning, I can't help wanting to run before I can walk.

I am still finding the basics quite difficult, and when I do successfully complete a cane, I sit there wondering what on earth to do with it. The best part is cutting through the finished cane and seeing the resulting design and there is a certain sense of achievement in that. However once I have moved on and want to take the next step I hit a brick wall. I am never quite happy with the finished beads and certainly need to concentrate more on getting the finish the best it can be.

Pat has being trying to motivate my creativity, but I have to admit that at the moment I don't feel very creative. He suggested I could use the mosaic idea to create something unusual, maybe a mosaic mirror, something like that. It's certainly an interesting idea, although where I would begin I do not know!

Mosaic cane

Last night I thought I would try something new but not too complicated. So an idea I had seen on the internet looked like a fun challenge. I was encouraged to try this indirectly by a friend who lives in Ireland, who one day had showed me some mosaic work on the internet and suggested I should try using polymer clay to make mosaics. I have always been attracted to mosaics, especially ancient works of art, and so I thought I would give this a go as a start.

I had already seen this tutorial on the internet. The process is amazingly simple. It's just a case of rolling various colours of clay and wrapping them in white and then rolling them together in a cane. You then cut down through the middle and add a layer of white between the slices and recombine. You do this repeatedly to form the mosaic pattern.

My cane turned out quite well, and I'm happy with the colour combination. So I decided to do as the tutorial suggested and made a heart pendant from some of the scraps. This is where the problem starts, in that I don't really understand how you effectively add a layer of the mosaic cane to the pendant. I ended up using small slices to cover a ball of scrap clay, but clearly there are better ways to do this. I also find difficulty in producing the heart shape even though I found a nifty tutorial on how to make hearts, but it still takes a lot of reshaping and moulding to get a half decent heart shape.

More on jewellery making

I admit that over the last few days I haven't spent much time on my clay work. I have in fact been decorating the house! However, I have been quite keen on taking the jewellery making to the next level. In other words, finding out the basics of making jewellery. Its painful that I can't do anything useful with the things I have made so I need to start learning.

I stumbled across the most amazing store in Lichfield which is amazing not just because it sells all the bits and pieces you need, but because of the very helpful beginner's sheets on the website.

This is wonderful for someone like me who hasn't got a clue where to start. Simple things like knowing what beading wire to buy is a fantastic thing to know.

I also have been very excited to see how other people have been using bits and pieces, inparticular bead caps to finish off the design. This bracelet in particular is rather stunning.

My own personal critic

The other day I received a lovely little pack of blue and black beads in the post, just perfect for adding a little bit of sparkle to a bracelet. I still have the elastic cord I borrowed from my friend, so last night, while watching tv, I started to experiment with stringing the beads on the cord in various combinations. What I ended up with is a bracelet consisting of my flowers beads and some little blue bicone beads. Since making it I have gazed at the finished bracelet for some time and decided that something is not quite right. Yes the colours match quite nicely, the cord is about right to grip around my wrist, but something is nagging me. It's the voice of my personal critic.

I finally worked out what the problem was. It's the beads I made that I'm not happy with. The finish is just not good enough. In truth there is no finish to speak of. To start with I didn't measure the clay to make the beads, so they vary very slightly in size. Secondly, I think I should have sliced the flower cane much thinner. The beads with the thick slices have not been smoothed enough and so you can see where I have added the slices. Thirdly, I should not have used the transparent clay for ther base bead.

What I really need to do is stop procrastinating and start sanding. Now that I know where I have gone wrong I can repeat the process again and hopefully end up with something better. By chance I found a very useful FAQ page with tips on finishing beads.

Flower beads

Yesterday I had the whole day to myself (how lovely!) and decided to make good use of the time to do some clay work. So with the aim of actually creating a complete bracelet, I decided to use the flower cane I have already made to make some beads. This part of the process is fairly easy. Cut some small pieces of transparent clay for the base bead and then roll in the palms of your hands to make a simple round bead. I made about 10 beads. I then sliced a short piece out of my flower cane and used that to reduce to a smaller size. I do this by squeezing lightly round and round the cane to make it smaller.

After the reduction I started slicing the end off the cane as thinly as I could, although to be honest, sometimes I think it could have been a lot finer. I had to be fairly careful about this because at times I still get some drag, which flattens the flower, but by some gentle squeezing back into shape this wasn't too problematic. On each bead I placed three slices of cane roughly a third way round the bead. This gives a nice even distribution and also leaves some gaps for poking the hole through. I am still using the cocktail sticks for poking the holes.

Here comes my unexpected pleasure of seeing the final beads, followed closely by mild disappointment. Seeing my final beads I was astonished how good they looked for something fairly simple. And I felt a certain pride in what I had achieved. That was until after I retrieved them from the oven. When they were finally baked the transparent clay obviously is no longer white, but at the same time not transparent either. In fact they came out with a slightly yellowish tinge. I have read that clay can go yellow in the oven, but I have never seen it so far until now. I think the real problem is with the transparent clay and I am starting to think that I should have used plain white. In fact I may redo this whole exercise in white to compare.

I did manage to finally string the beads on the elastic cord that my friend gave me, but 10 beads are certainly not enough to go around my wrist. So I am now waiting for a bulk of beads to arrive in the post which should supplement the bracelet and make it more attractive.

What a find!

Yesterday, just by accident, I came across the most fabulous website explaining all about how to make beaded jewellery and I have to say that I couldn't quite believe my luck. I can't put into words my excitement when I found it! What is so wonderful about it is that it has pages that explain basic things like how to use crimp beads, what tools you need, right down to what size beading wire to use etc.

Instantly by looking at a few of the projects I can see some potential for how I could use my beads. In particular, this little gem about how to make a pendant necklace caught my eye. It's perfect for using with my lazy mokume gane heart, and simple enough for me to do. What was a real revelation and a useful tip is that there is some explanation on this page about pendants where the holes are too large and for this the solution is to add a bead at top and bottom to hold the wire in place.

Another type of necklace also grabbed my attention. I may use this idea for the kaleidoscope beads I made. I have a pair of pliers at home so that is a start. I just need to go out and find the crimps, the wire and whatever other bits listed in these projects.

Thoughts on jewellery making

I have been out to a music festival all weekend so have had no time at all to do any clay work. Despite this I have had plans in the back of my mind to do something useful with the beads I have made. It seems such a shame that they are just sitting in my little plastic box, hidden from view.

So now I have to tackle the challenge of making a piece of jewellery with the beads. Now I have to admit that jewellery making is a mystery yet to be revealed to me. I have so far skimmed through a few books and magazines in my local Hobbycraft but the construction of a simple necklace remains alarmingly complicated. I have literally no thread, cord, wire, findings, beads of any kind to play around with and also no clue where to start. Of course the answer to this is to buy a beginners' guide to jewellery making, but in the meantime another source of information is at hand.

My friend at work has developed a nice little homemade business out of making and selling jewellery and other fashion items, including clothing. She's only just starting this up with a friend but it is interesting to see the ideas she comes up with.

I have managed to identify the fact that you can make a simple bracelet from buying some elastic cord and then threading the beads on that, so this look simple enough to try out. I would like to put some spacer beads in between the beads I have made, so I will hopefully get some off Ebay (althought the size, colour and amount is an added concern). My friend has some elastic cord that she says I can use to string the bracelet. Fingers crossed a finished piece may appear by the end of the week!

My first flower cane

I count this as my first real flower cane (even though I managed to make the petal cane earlier and also tried to make the rather unsuccessful orchid cane of my own design).

This lesson grabbed my eye while I was surfing around Flickr looking at the wonderful creations posted on one of the Polymer clay groups. To be honest I'm not sure that looking at other people's work is a good idea or not, as it can make me feel equally inspired or despondent depending on my mood.

Unexpectedly I discovered one woman's photostream which included tutorials in the form of pictures. This is a nice way to follow the tutorial because it is simple and makes it look strangely easy. I decided to try this Blue flower cane tutorial.

With my lovely new packs of clay I decided to recreate the flower cane, choosing brilliant blue, white and a lilac mix I have left over. Making the skinner blend has become quite easy, although I still managed to mess it up a little bit and had to press it back into an equal layer for rolling. I now use my pasta machine for this as it does make life easier. This skinner blend had a double gradient ie with blue on the edges of the strip and white in the middle, which you then roll up into a cane. I feel pretty confident now making the petal design, it's such a great way to make the veining of the petals.

This time I took more care in constructing the flower, but the bit that I didn't take so much care with was the centre of the flower which is supposed to be made out of a simple lace cane. For the centre I chose the lilac and more blue, but the pattern didn't really turn out very well, and in fact I think it is too large for the flower. So next time I will take more care with this.

I finally padded the flower out in transparent clay and then reduced. The reduction caused some minor distortion around the edges of the petals, and I think next time I will remedy this by adding more layers of transparent around the edge of the cane. Generally though I am happy with this first attempt at a flower cane.

Storage solutions

Today I found a great little video from Alice Stroppel about storing canes. I have been using little plastic tupperware boxes which I bought from my local supermarket, but it occurred to me last night that maybe I'm not being as organised as I should be.

I tend to have one box which is full of "good clay" ie. clay that is unused or half-used (some still in their wrapping). I try to keep the plastic wrapping around half-used clay so I can remember what colour they are. It can get pretty difficult to distinguish between white and transparent clay when there is no label on them! I then have a box for scrap clay, a box for baked items and a box for canes.

Unfortunately I noticed last night that the cane box is getting rather full. The question of how to best store the canes came into my mind, because you can't continue to add more and have them all stick together. The ideas in the video are really useful, so maybe I will invest in one of those 3 drawer stacks. I'm not sure what they mean about wrapping the canes in wax paper, but I don't think I would have the patience to do this! I think the best solution is probably just to store vertically within the box as suggested in the video.

A little chat

The other day one of my colleagues, who does a lot of clay work, brought in some clay jewellery she had bought from a craft fair. The pieces were selling for about £9 and had been made by an American woman.

One of the pieces she showed me was a little pendant in a sort of pine cone shape and it was constructed by adding layers of cane in the shape of leaves around a base bead to create the final pendant.

I was amazed by two things; the first that it was so well done and looked so professional. The detail was excellent and it was so well designed. The second; that I could see how it had been made. The basic ingredient was a leaf cane made out of green and black and with a border added to its edge. This had been reduced down to about a centimetre in size and then slices taken from the cane to build the final pendant. It seemed such a simple idea and yet was so effective.

Now I havent yet had a go at making a leaf cane and it is something I have been meaning to do. I have a tutorial which I found on the internet which shows how you make it. It makes me wonder if I could replicate this idea. Of course the beauty was in the fineness of the detail and I don't think that reducing canes has been my strong point so far, but I am certainly going to try it out.

Using the clay gun: Lazy mokume gane

I have already said I have been keen to try out the mokume gane technique which creates a wonderful pattern by shaving layers of clay. So far though I have never actually attempted it. So when I saw a lesson posted on a polymer clay community it really caught my eye.

The tutorial was titled 'Lazy woman's mokume gane', in other words achieve the same effect but with less work. Sounds great and the best part is it involved using my new clay gun.

The process is pretty much the same as how I created the Klimt cane, the only difference being that instead of using a square shaped disc I used a circular one. So you have to prepare the same variation of coloured discs of clay to form the log and then extrude it through the clay gun.

On this occasion I spent more time conditioning the clay and the result was much better, althought the extrusion was still very difficult. I suspect that the best option for using the gun is to only use brand new opened clay for this. It's a shame I find it so difficult to extrude because the best thing about this process is that it involves so few tools ie no pasta machine, no acrylic roller, just your hands and the clay gun.

The result is of course a long log of circular clay. Again the process is to cut into lengths and combine but this time the precision is not really needed because you want that variation of shape and size in the pattern. When you have the final block, what you end up with is a sort of mokume gane effect which is very pretty. (I used the same colours leftover from the previous extrusion).

Again I sliced and created a sheet of this pattern and wrapped it around a ball of scrap clay. Then after a bit of messing around ended up with this heart pendant. I'm quite pleased with the shape of it and with the pattern on the surface. I finished it by poking a hole from the top of the heart throught to the bottom and then baked it suspended from the cocktail stick.

Using the clay gun: Klimt cane

Last night I finally took the plunge and unpacked the clay extruder (or clay gun). I had my eye on a lesson in Donna Kato's book on making Klimt canes with the clay gun, ie creating a pattern that looks a bit like a work of Klimt.

So following the instructions, I inserted a square disc in the end of the clay gun and then prepared the clay. The gun comes with a surprisingly large number of discs with a variety of shaped holes in. I'm really pleasantly surprised at how much variety there is.

The instructions then tell you to roll a number of clay logs from several colours. I didn't use the new clay packs for this, I just used some leftovers, because actually you don't need much of each colour. You just need enough to cut some discs of the same size and then combine them randomly into a log. I chose a few colours that I thought would work well together: peppermint, brilliant blue and a light blue mix I had made previously. I then pushed the clay into the gun for the extrusion. Unfortunately, despite Donna's good advice, I didn't condition the clay much at all and this was a really big mistake. The clay was already leftover which means it had gone slightly hard, and even though I had made it fairly soft, I should have spent a lot more time softening it.

The result was that pushing the clay through was a really hard job. I can't emphasise how hard it is. Even when you think the clay is quite soft it is still difficult to extrude when packed into the gun. Of course the fact I hadn't conditioned it well also meant that the extruded clay came out with cracks in the sides. My hands are still sore as a result of the extrusion.

The result is a long snake of square clay which you divide and press together to form a block and then the result is a rather lovely pattern. Again I still haven't got my head around the magic of how the pattern is created but you can see how the gun creates the variation of colour throughout the extruded clay.

The great thing about this is that it is very easy to slice the end of the block and create a sheet out of this pattern. You can roll it and make the sheet larger and even if you warp the pattern it still looks great. However, one extrusion is really not enough, so in future I would definitely make several to form a bigger block.

The final part of this was to decide what to do with the final sheet. This is where I find the task quite difficult. I chose some scrap clay and wrapped the sheet around it to form this sort of triangular pendant. I'm not really happy with the final shape and I really need to find a better way of doing this as its a real problem. Finally I poked a hole through the top corner and baked on the cocktail stick.

New arrivals

My new packs have arrived at last, and I'm looking forward to putting them to good use. I decided to order a nice range of colours, as I have a few ideas in mind and want to try them out.

I still have a number of tutorials which I have printed off the internet which I am keen to try. And of course there is the clay gun....

Clay supplies

Today I bought some new clay supplies. Over the past few months I have been buying my clay from a well known UK store called Hobbycraft, where a pack can be bought for just over two pounds. Now I have always thought this quite expensive, because let's face it, those packs are not that large. So the last time I visited I decided that despite the convenience I would no longer buy my clay there if I could help it.

Today I found a much better value store on Ebay, where the packs average out to about £1.50 each. The best way is to buy in bulk rather than buying individual packs, but even when buying in bulk I always calculate the cost per pack (including postage) to compare prices.

It's still of course useful to visit an actual shop just to see the colour range, which is something you can't do when shopping online, however you definitely get better value for money online.

Now I'm waiting for my new clay packs to arrive.

Tools for the Klimt cane

The other day a parcel dropped on my mat and it was the clay gun I had bought from Ebay. And what a very exciting purchase it is. I've been dying to try out the Klimt cane technique (a pattern of multiple circles which looks curiously like a work of Klimt) which I have seen dotted around the internet and also in Donna Kato's Millefiori book. So for this purpose alone the gun seems like a very useful little tool. It arrived in pieces so I suppose I have to fix it together.

The process looks fairly simple: roll out several rolls of coloured clay, stack them and squeeze them through the clay gun. However having never used a clay gun before, and in fact having not yet even removed the gun from the packet I have yet to find out if this will prove to be more difficult than expected. Following Donna Kato's instructions it still seems to be a mystery as to how the gun produces the variation of colour but I am sure that magic must happen somewhere along the way.

I do have another minor issue at the moment, which is that I have run out of usable clay. This is why I have been so keen to try out the methods of using scrap clay. It's about all I have left! So I really need to go out and buy a load of new packs.

Getting the sandpaper out

Yesterday I decided to do a job I have been putting off for some time. I had bought some wet/dry sandpaper some time ago, but never got around to using it. The pack included coarse, medium and fine papers. I have read in several books that once a piece of clay has been baked it can be sanded and buffed to make it nice and shiny. The process seems to be to start with the coarse paper and then work through to the fine.

The sun was shining outside and so I sat on my patio and decided to try this for the first time. I chose the transparent heart that I had baked previously. The first sandpaper I used was the coarse type. Unsurprisingly it made scratches on the surface, and my first thought was I had messed the whole thing up. It did show however that it is quite easy to reduce any variations in size with the coarse paper, as it wears down the clay quite quickly.

In an attempt to remove the scratches, I took the fine paper and sanded with that and found that this in fact did smooth the surface down and removed most of the coarse scratches. Finally I buffed the heart with a bit of cloth.

I can't say that at the end the piece looked particularly different, so I am still not sure how successful this process was. I found sanding such a small object quite difficult and perhaps there is an easier way to do this that I am yet to discover. The next experiment I want to try will be to use the glaze I had bought a few months ago and see what effect that has on my heart pendant.

Lace cane experiment

The other day I was having a look through the photos of some artwork posted on Flickr. The jewellery I came across was clearly made by a professional, but what surprised me was how simple the basic technique was to create the final piece. The artist had simply used a lace cane of contrasting colours and used the slices to make a loop pendant. The final piece had been lovingly polished into a beautiful pendant.

The simplicity of this design intrigued me, so this morning I thought I would try it myself. I already had a black and white lace cane left over and even though it isn't the most exciting colour combination, it is neutral enough to try the experiment. I also wanted to test out my new circular cutters I have just bought from Ebay.

The first process was to roll out a blob of scrap clay into a fairly thick sheet and then cut thin slices off the lace cane to cover the surface so that none of the scrap clay can be seen. I then took a large cutter and cut a circular piece out of the sheet. Then I took the smaller cutter and cut a small disc from inside this circle of clay. (You do have to be a bit careful when you scrape up the final pendant as it can get a little bit mis-shaped.) The result was the pendant in the above photo. It is still not baked but I hope that once it is I can sand and polish it so that it will be smooth and shiny.

The back of this pendant has not been covered because I ran out of the cane! However as this is only my first test piece I will let this minor issue go this time.

Natasha beads and a little bit extra

I don't accept defeat very well and admit I wasn't happy with my Natasha bead attempt, so when I discovered this tutorial for feather beads on Polyzine I had to try again. I picked three remaining lumps of brilliant blue, peppermint and a pale blue mix that had resulted from using the pasta machine on some leftover mixed clay. This seemed like a fairly nice combination, and besides I am now running low on my choice of coloured clay.

Following the instructions, I decided that this time I would surely succeed! Starting with a basic bullseye cane and wrapping with sheets of varying colours I finished the cane. Simple enough. You flattern the log into a square cane and then using a 'credit card' to make indentations into the log on all sides, thus creating the pattern on the inside. I'm lazy enough not to go get a credit card and instead grabbed a square cutter (part of a set I had just purchased on Ebay). The thick edge of the cutter was just right for making the indentations without slicing too thinly. Then the tricky part: cut the cane up into pieces and again use the Natasha bead technique of mirroring the internal pattern of each piece by slicing it in four. Again I couldn't really follow the instructions and while puzzling over it, I noticed one of the photos on the webpage which showed that in fact all you need to do is slice in quarters ie one slice vertical, one slice horizontal. You then literally turn all four corners inside out. It's far easier to see how this works working with the bullseye cane because you can see where the joins are!

So now, I think I've understood it, but despite this I still found it a little tricky to recontruct the four corners, because I usually find I have cut one corner slightly larger than the other. I managed to correct this by slicing off the edges to resize. This is also useful for when you smear the faces or get some bits of clay contamination, as it's so easy to just slice the edge and it is once again perfect.

I decided to experiment with the shapes of the final beads, in a smiliar way to the photos on the webpage, so I made a few oval and some I left square. I could use these interchangeably in one necklace, depending on how they look together, but I would need to find something to string them on.

At the end I was left with one small lump of clay from the bits I had sliced off and tried marbling a heart out of it. Not overly impressed with the result, I rolled a log and chopped it up into small tube shaped beads. I then poked a hole through them using cocktail sticks and dangled them from the ledges of my takeaway tray and baked them in the oven. So the result was three different shaped beads, and I was fairly pleased by all, strangely even by the little tube beads which show how effective marbling can be. The main things I would improve if I repeated the process would to be to add more colours in the original bulls eye cane and to make far more indentations to create a more intricate pattern.

Flowers to hearts

After my mild disappointment with the Natasha beads, I decided to go back to creating a basic flower cane. To do this I used the same technique as before to create the petal cane which I had been so impressed with and constructed it around a very basic black and white lace cane for the centre of the flower. (I just built it using a few black and white bullseye canes squashed together).

I've been trying to use what colour clay I have left over before I use new packs, so black and white wouldn't have been my first choice here, but it's all I could think of at the time. The construction went quite well, but as usual I hadn't made enough skinner blend rolls so when I constructed the flower cane the depth just wasn't there and the reduction resulted in a rather distorted flower. Again, not overwhelmed by my final piece.

So, feeling very cheesed off, I started messing around with the remaining bits of clay and came up with the bright idea of experimenting with the transparent clay I would have used for wrapping the flower cane with. Up to this point I have never worked with or baked anything with transparent clay in it. I have seen a lot of pieces of jewellery which use transparent clay to make the most fabulous beads, and I've been looking forward to trying it myself.

So with a bit of cherry red and some transparent white I marbled and shaped the clay into a heart, poked a hole through it and baked it with the aim to create a simple pendant. I wasn't really bothered too much about the shape, as the most important aspect was to see what the transparent clay would look like after the baking process.

The above photo is the baked bead. I have mixed feelings about it because I see that there are flecks or bubbles under the surface and I'm not sure if that is the usual result, or if I have messed it up in the marbling, or if I accidentally included some white clay in there. The other thing I dislike is the colour change to the cherry red clay which has gone a little pink. I actually preferred the colour combination before it was baked. The final piece doesn't look that impressive, but it probably needs to be polished so I might try this and see if it improves.

Leftovers reused: Natasha beads

Within the depths of Syndee Holt's book I found an interesting technique for using up those scrappy bits of clay. Apparently these kind of beads are called 'Natasha beads' after the person who invented ithe technique. The instructions in the book didn't look too complicated so I decided to give it a go.

Basically the idea is to marble up some bits of clay to create a log and then shape this into a block, then make four cuts in the block to turn the pieces around. By doing this you are creating a mirror pattern on 'all sides' of the block according to the book. Yes, this does sound insanely easy, and for the average person it probably is, but not for me for some reason. I sat there with those pieces trying time and again to piece that block back together and make some vague mirror pattern, but for some reason I just could not get my head around the process. The top face is fairly easy - you just place the faces of the two sides you have just cut opposite each other and you see the mirror image. But the next challenge is to get the back to mirror. I managed this on the blue slab in the photo. As for the other sides of the block I still have no clue.

It is quite worrying to think that something which appears to be fairly simple, could in fact turn out to be so complicated. Maybe it was the instructions, maybe it is my pea sized brain that can't comprehend it. After several attempts though I ended up with these slabs, which do look quite pretty. It amazes me how those random bits of clay can produce something of a pattern. And yet despite this I don't feel it was a success. I'm still not really sure what to do with these slabs, if I really like them, or if I want to try turning them into usable beads. Maybe I will come back to them later.

What to do with that kaleidoscope cane

So far I have dabbled with different cane types and the one which I have really been impressed with was the bulls eye kaleidoscope cane, so it's nice to have something at the end of it. I decided to reduce the cane to a size which could be used as square beads and then wrapped in a border of white clay to hide the pattern that had seeped into the sides of the cane. I sliced the cane into five blocks to create the square beads.

These beads are quite chunky, but I kind of like that. To be honest I think I was just so paranoid about making the same mistake I made piercing the chocolate jelly roll by slicing them too thin, maybe I have gone to the other extreme and made them too chunky!

The main thing is that they baked fine and came out without any problems. I need to look for something now to string them on.

Shaman cane

Last night a new book dropped on my doormat; Syndee Holt's Polymer Clay for the First Time. I had been looking forward to this, specifically because I had noticed there was a lesson in there about creating pictorial canes. The shaman cane particularly grabbed me, as I do have a keen interest in ancient carvings and paintings, petroglyphs, hieroglyphs etc. Creating a picture in the clay seemed particularly challenging, so I was keen to start straight away.

Fortunately I had some half used blocks of clay which were perfect for the task; sahara, black and blue. I decided to throw all caution to the wind in terms of the amount used and just conditioned whatever I had. So following the instructions in the books I started by making a checkerboard cane and then continued to construct the man by creating the head, arms and legs from black clay. It took me quite a while to construct (about 2 hours in fact) but at the end this is the result. It's a fairly large block and I used up all of my sahara, but I can see how making a large block like this means you are more likely to maintain the proportions of the picture.

I was a little disappointed with the feet because I rushed this part and of course the result is that they are not quite formed properly. However I was very careful in this case to constantly clean my hands with wipes, particularly after conditioning some dry black clay which is particularly dangerous for contaminating other colours.

The end result was fairly satisfying. The cane will need to be reduced and then I would like to add a border around it, maybe several different borders if I cut the block into pieces. I have decided to leave this piece to rest for a while before doing anymore to it, basically because I used some brand new sahara which, when conditioned, became extremely soft, so that when I cut through the core, the blade was dragging it rather than cutting it clean.

I do find that by trying out different exercises like this means I now feel more confident in my use of the clay, in understanding how to work it, how to avoid some of the basic errors I made at the start. I have learnt for example that the driest clay can be squeezed and "warmed up" in the hands and that this is a better technique than trying to condition it in the pasta machine. I find that some of the basics which seemed quite challenging at first, now don't seem so difficult once you get a better understanding of the clay.

Odd shaped bullseye kaleidoscope

Again I found this lesson in my Donna Kato book and for some reason had an instant desire to try it out. The process looked easy enough. I felt confident that I could make the skinner blend for the internal core of the bullseye cane, and I had some cherry red, black and white clay left. I also felt confident making the bullseye cane. Basically this is the same process as the feather, which involves squashing the bullseye cane, and then using the kaleidscope technique I had previously used for the scrap kaleidoscope. In fact I prefer the simplicity and definition of the pattern within this to my last kaleidoscope and I'm always surprised at how effective the pattern looks when it has been divided and constructed.

The only new aspect of this process was attempting to manipulate the swirl of the pattern by changing the cane from square shape to circular and then back to square again. Yet even this may seem a little daunting and yet is easy to achieve.

I haven't yet baked this, but I hope to finally produce something usable. Perhaps by slicing a thin section off the cane and poking a hole in one of the corners this could become a pendant.

Leftovers reused: kaleidoscope

This was another lesson from Donna Kato's book that appealed to my objective of using up all those bits of old dried up clay. I have had a little dabble in making the odd basic cane here and there and they haven't really gone anywhere. So now they are just dried up little canes that break easily. So rather than throw them away, I decided to use them for something a bit more intiricate. This great little idea is so easy to make, because it's basically just a case of rolling out a flat sheet of colour (I used black) and placing a layer of whatever you like on top eg. old canes etc, different colours, stripes, whatever you like really. Then you just roll it up and shape it into a triangular cane and reduce.

In this case I didn't spend a lot of time trying to coordinate colours, I just used what I had and it's easy to see the little canes that have been embedded inside. Then to create the kaleidoscope, you just divide and combine to create the pattern. Easy to do and I was pleasantly surprised by the results. It's not really that well designed, and not carefully crafted, but a very useful idea. I hope that I can improve on the kaleidoscope technique because I have seen some fabulous effects by a number of artists. It's also comforting to know that none of the clay has to go to any waste no matter how dry it is.

Leftovers reused: Feather

I'm literally drowning in bits of old dry clay and I really wanted to try using some of that up before I start a new project. So last night I started messing about with the scraps. One pile of clay was an old stripy stack of white and purple that's not going to any good use, so I chopped it up into tiny pieces to create a mix. One thing I can say about the dried up clay is that it's very useful for this kind of activity because it's easy to chop.

I saw a recipe for a Starry night cane in Donna Kato's book which seemed a good idea for these bits and was fairly simple to do: just roll out the chopped up clay and roll through the pasta machine a few times and you get a really great marbling effect. I did this but found it hard to stop and consequently overdid it a little with the pasta machine. So by the time I had created the stack for the Starry night effect I had lost a lot of the line definition. In fact I was closer to creating a plain sheet of lilac! However, this was the first time I had tried marbling and even colour mixing, so still an interesting process.

I gave up on the purple and white and instead took a multicoloured chopped up mix of old clay, and remembering the feather idea on Polymerclayweb, I decided to tackle that from memory. I twisted the clay into a streaky log, which gives a pleasing effect and then rolled a black layer around the outside. I then squashed the cane and divided, layering the parts not directly on top of each other, to create the feather. Surprisingly simple to do and makes me realise that with more care a more intricate feather could be achieved. I'm not really sure how I can use this feather, as I imagine it's fairly difficult to reduce, but maybe I'll come back to it later.

Leftovers

Over the past few months I've been experimenting with various colours and have ended up with a lot of waste. Bits off the ends of canes, old stacks and so forth. Not wanting to throw good clay away I have just dropped them into my storage boxes and left them. I picked up a few bits the other day and they've gone dry over time, but it did make me wonder if I could put any use to them.

A colleague I work with, (who is much more skillful then me) dropped her latest creation on my desk this morning. She had created a number of cylindrical beads which had simply been rolled from multiple colours of clay scraps. and created a rather lovely multicoloured necklace.

So I had a look on the web again for some ideas on what to do with some of these old scraps (assuming that they are still usable) and found this really useful page on Polymerclayweb which gives lots of options for how to use them, including mixing new colours, marbling and my favourite: creating swirled lentil beads. It's good to know that no clay has to go to waste, and maybe even with the scraps I could possibly create something useful.

Almost...but not quite

Last week I took the plunge and bought Donna Kato's Millefiori techniques book. Admittedly trying to mimic anything that she does seems rather too ambitious, but her work is an inspiration if unattainable.

The initial part of the book was actually very useful for laying down some basics, such as choosing the right clay, storage etc. (It was useful to learn for example that Fimo is the hardest clay to use, so it makes sense for me to use Fimo Soft just to make the process that little bit easier.)

Surprisingly many of the tutorials in the book seemed achievable, although putting them into practrice may be considerably more difficult! I am yet to find out. Despite this I was drawn to one photograph near the beginning of the book, which had not even been created by the author herself. For some reason this particular piece of jewellery took my interest, so rather than starting to follow one of the tutorials, I decided I would try to recreate some of the beads in the photo.

For this I bought three packs of clay, chocolate, caramel and sahara in Fimo Soft. Donna Kato's instructions for creating a jelly roll cane were very helpful and I found this part of the process quite easy. The next step involved following her instructions on creating a stripy border. Again this was a fairly simple process of creating the stack and placing the strips around the outside. Then wrapping a layer of chocolate around the outside of the cane. All well and good so far.

The problems arose when I started slicing the cane and discovered that I was distorting the shape. I took an unused blade and sliced with that, confirming the fact that the blade I had been using was in fact blunt. With the new blade I sliced about 10 slices off the cane with the aim to bake them as flat round beads. Unfortunately I had sliced them too thin because, as you can see from the photo, the cocktail stick distorted the shape as I pierced them through.

I decided not to bake the final beads and have to admit that this minor setback left me feeling somewhat despondent. But from all of this I can say I have learnt something valuable, something which Donna in her book had also commented on. The problem was in the size of the cane to begin with. It was just too small. Far better to create a larger cane and reduce down. This no doubt retains the shape and pattern of the cane when slicing. I have been working on false economy; trying to use less clay in my projects which in fact has just resulted in more waste. My aim is to get back to the basics, roll a suitably sized cane that will retain its shape.

Micashift video

Today I stumbled across the most amazing demo on Youtube of how to make micashift beads. Basically this process uses the mokume gane technique and it's something I'm really excited to try out, but first I need to purchase the tools for the job - basically some metallic clay in various colours and a rubber stamp to create the design. I have read about this technique in various places but always thought it seemed a bit too advanced for my level. But this video surprised me and made it seem manageable. I think it's really helpful to see someone demonstrate a technque rather than just read instructions from a book. You get a better idea of where the pitfalls are and by seeing it in action, it can be easier to mimic the process.

One of the interesting comments made in the video was the recommendation to use wax paper to lay the clay on. Apparently this helps to ensure the clay doesn't stick to the table. The other useful tools are shape cutters. My local hobby store has a limited selection, but I haven't yet purchased any. In this case the demonstrator has simply used a small piece of card as a template for the square beads. It just shows how you can use anything at your disposal and that you don't always need specific tools for the task.

Interesting ideas

I've been spending some time lately having a surf around the web for new techniques and ideas. There's loads of stuff out there which I can't wait to try out. Particularly building a cane that is more complex and moves away from the flower cane idea. I came across this butterfly wing construction, which on the surface seems surprisingly simple to build although requires a lot of building work. The basic technique of creating flattened bulls eye canes seems fairly manageable. The tip seems to be to just find a butterfly design that you like and use it as your model.

Butterflies have of late been a particularly popular jewellery design element for pendants, so this could be particularly useful cane to build. It also gives me ideas about building other picture based constructions using the clay.

Orchid experiment

Taking the petal idea further, I was really driven by the idea of making something of my own design. The basic ingredients were there, I had already crafted the petal cane (see my last post) but just slicing these off and placing them onto the base bead to form a vaguely flower shape just didn't seem enough. I was on a roll and didn't want to stop. So with petal cane still intact I decided to experiment further.

My inspiration was a pink orchid, which sits in my lounge, and has surprisingly flowered after a couple of years of lifelessness. Taking the petal cane I started building my orchid cane by attempting to mould the shape of the petals into the orchid petal shape, cutting the cane in half and combining to form a vaguely cane like shape around a small white core. Adding some tiny rolls of white clay in between the petal canes helps plugs the gaps. Then I trimmed the ends off so that all pieces were the same length. The final part of the process was to wrap the cane in a layer of white clay to keep it together. After some further rolling and reducing, you can see how it turned out.

Well, OK it's not how I imagined it, but at the same time, it's not a complete disaster. But seeing how this was built taught me a few things about caning. Firstly, the design wasn't properly defined. I kind of rushed into it, and built it on a wing and a prayer. So the point is that I didn't plan it very well to start with. I only had the petal canes I started with in the last post, and a few bits left over. As a result the cane wasn't nearly large enough to define the design and I should really have used more colours and layers to better define the borders between the petals, because it resulted in much of the colour being merged in the reduction process. Also the petals have sort of lost their shape at the ends and this is down to the layer of white clay around the edges. For one, the layer of white clay was too thick.

On the positive side you can still see the veining in the petals, but I think I will spend more time learning the basics of creating different pictures within canes before I move on further.

Petals

I spotted this technique of creating petals in the same book. It basically takes the process of the skinner blend to the next level. Again I chose white and cherry red clay to create the blend. The instructions are fairly straightforward: create the cane and then slice along the length so you have dissected the cane into quarter lengths. You then squeeze and shape the cane into a petal shape and cut in half. By combining the pieces side by side, and recutting the cane in half, the result is a more detailed veining of the petal, as you can just about see in the core of the cane on the left of the photo.

It's odd how as you layer the canes side by side you would think it's not going to work. It's only when you cut through the core that you see it has been a success. And with surprisingly little effort, I think this gives a real sense of achievement. The design can then be sliced off to create a flower design on a base bead.

The real problem I am finding at the moment is cross-contamination of colour, particularly with very strong colours, such as this cherry red. I have noticed that when creating the skinner blend my white clay doesnt stay white for very long, as it gets contaminated from rolling through the pasta machine, from residue off the rolling pin and of course from my fingers. The key to all this of course is using handwipes to clean the tools in between colours, but I have to admit that due to lack of patience and sheer laziness I have lapsed somewhat in this aspect.

Fortunately the whole process has made me realise just how forgiving the clay really is. You can in fact get away with making a skinner blend out of not-so-white clay, streaked with bits and still get good results. These blemishes seem to get lost in the process. And you can always of course right wrongs by adding a little bit extra to hide mistakes.

Revelations

Nothing profound but...I made some discoveries today. Going back to my teenage years (many moons ago now) I remember working with slips, glazes and clays to sculpt all kinds of wierd creations, in particular a huge male head which unfortunately met its demise during the firing process when it exploded. Anyway, what I'm getting at is that I've suddenly realised how much I miss it. It was dirty, messy and the clay ended up everywhere, but I enjoyed it, and to some extent a part of me has been missing throughout these years of dull office life.

Discovering polymer clay has opened up that world of possibility to me again. It's highly unlikely I will ever have the space, time and expensive kiln to create earthenware, so for me polymer clay is a revelation. For one it doesn't require any water, it can be fired or baked in a normal oven, and the choice of coloured clay replaces the difficult task of using coloured slips and glazes.

I've also started to see how the fundamental process of building canes can be used to create endless designs, so now I'm inspired to try something of my own using the basic techniques of the skinner blend and flower cane.

Lollipop

With the skinner blend sorted out, I really wanted to try something with my new skill. I found this little project in one of my books 'How to make polymer clay beads' by Linda Peterson. What is nice about this project is the minimal amount of materials needed for the task: just three colours of clay. For this I chose a red, white and a purple clay. (I have only ever tried using Fimo so far.)

This time I used the pasta machine. It's very good for conditioning bits of my left over clay to transform a crumbly mess into something usable. I find that passing it through the pasta machine a few times helps to create a usable sheet. I then used the tissue blade to cut three triangles of each colour and place them side by side to form a sheet. By rolling them into a small cane you are effectively creating the graduation of colour needed to make a skinner blend. You then roll this out with the rolling pin so that you have a stripy sheet. I must say at this point I didn't quite understand where all this was going. The instructions told me to pass the sheet through the pasta machine five times. I did this before realising that you need to fold it in between passes! Then I realised of course that it's the same process I took using the rolling pin - folding and rolling to make a basic skinner blend.

By cutting the finished sheet into pieces and then stacking, followed by slicing, something miraculous happens. A pattern emerges from the irregularity of the stacked sheets. Just seeing how easily this is done brought a smile to my face.

Now you can lay the pieces on a background sheet and use to wrap around a log of clay. (I used the scraps I had cut to form the base bead.) I found you have to be careful when pinching the ends of the log together, as you don't want to mess up the stripy design. Giving it a careful twist means you get the nice swirling effect of the two colours combining. You then thin the ends down and curl the log of clay up to form the lollipop.

Tackling the skinner blend with a rolling pin

Considering that the last time I tried the skinner blend using the pasta machine the sheet of clay ended up in bits, I decided to try a more controlled method using the rolling pin. For this I chose a very strong blue clay and white clay for the blend. Following the instructions I found on the internet I rolled out two very small sheets of each colour, cut them into rectangles of exactly the same size, and then cut a diagonal across each sheet using the tissue blade.

It's been a while since I took the time to do any crafting, and unfortunately the clay I have stored in plastic boxes is not as fresh as it once was. In fact, it is now a little crumbly. This means it's quite difficult to condition with the fingers and cracks when folded, and makes the process considerably more difficult! Unfortunately this is all I have at the moment, so I had to persevere. With some rolling and squeezing, the clay begins to get more workable, but I am sure using older clay like this is best avoided.

After placing two rectangles of each colour and softly pushing them together to form the sheet to be blended, I used the rolling pin this time rather than the pasta machine. It's interesting that although rolling by hand is much harder work, I found it easier to control the sheet. It wasn't quite as easy as I had seen on the YouTube clip, but I was certainly able to maintain the size and shape of the sheet during the rolling and folding process. I didn't count how many times I folded, but it certainly wasn't anywhere near 30 times!

Despite this, the sheet was a success. I was able to roll a small cane from it, starting from the white end of the sheet and rolling to the blue, finishing with a completed cane with the white gradient at the core. And then I became really ambitious and decided to create a basic flower cane by cutting the cane into sections and combining around a white core. The cane isn't anywhere near large enough to make it worthwhile, but this is only my first effort, and I would definitely take the time to make a much larger and more intricate design next time. You can just about see the skinner blend in the outside 'petals' of the flower design.

Gradients

One of the most fundamental techniques you need to learn for working with polymer clay is how to create a gradient of colours in a sheet of clay. There's loads of information on the internet on how to do this, and before you can start building anything more complicated than a monochrome bead, you have to get this one right.

They call this a "Skinner blend" after the lady who discovered it. It involves a pasta machine or a rolling pin and two blocks of different coloured clay for the blending process. I found a very clear set of instructions on how to do this on a professional's personal website.

Fortunately, I already own a pasta machine, which sadly will now never see a piece of pasta in its lifetime. It was bought by my in-laws (probably as a Christmas gift), and was gathering dust in the loft, until I freed it from insignificance.

So with brand new pasta machine set up and ready to go, I attempted to do this process a few months ago, but it did not end well. Clearly more practice is needed. I followed the instructions and started rolling the clay through the machine, folding and rolling it through again. In the first couple of passes the blend looks awful and you do start to wonder what you are doing wrong. But the blend does improve as you persevere.

This is where I think I went wrong. After a few passes, the clay became quite wide and thin. For that reason it became too wide to pass through the machine, which I presume is where you are supposed to push it back with your hands on both edges. Unfortunately the next time I passed it throught the machine it became so thin that the sheet started to break up. Not perfect but at least I could see the effect even if I couldn't use it for any useful purpose.

I have seen video tutorials on YouTube where the presenter has used a rolling pin instead. This looked surprisingly easy although she said that you need to roll and fold it about 30 times to get a nice gradient.

Here's what I did earlier (part two)

Of course there's nothing more exciting than bringing a bit of colour into the equation. The black beads were a good start, but I really wanted to try something a little bit more ambitious. This certainly did not disappoint! I picked up this idea off the internet, and it's probably a good example of wanting to run before I can walk. These are called "chevron style" beads. The colour choice itself is pretty vibrant and there's no mixing involved, it's just a case of rolling out black, blue, red and white pieces for this cane. The process involves cutting different colours of rectangular sheets, laying them on top of each other and cutting diagonally across the block, then laying the striped wedges together to form a star pattern. You then reduce the cane down in size. The original cane is on the left hand side of the photo. When you cut through the cane you can see the star effect at its core. The rest is fairly straightforward to make the beads from this cane. You simply cut off a length of the cane and then you have to shave off the ends to create the rounded shape of the beads.

I found this project very exciting, for the reason that it involved using multiple colours of clay and a fairly tricky process of combining the pieces together. The cane did lose its form a little during the process of reducing it down to size, which involved squeezing and pinching it until the cane is the required size, but I suppose this comes with practise. I also found that shaving the edges of the beads to make them round is easier said than done and in actual fact if you look closely, you can see that the final beads are not perfectly round.

On the positive side I added a little twist of my own. The original design of the cane was to have straight lines running through it to create the star shape at each end, but at the point of shaving each bead, I found it added an extra sparkle to the design by slightly twisting the bead to create the swirling effect on the outside.

Here's what I did earlier (part one)

My very first experiment using polymer clay was simple: make a bead - in a vaguely bead-like shape using one colour. Nothing fancy. For these I bought a bead roller, which is useful for creating beads of mostly the same size and shape. You can probably manage without, by cutting pieces of clay to the same size, but using the bead roller is interesting in itself. It gives you a little circular tool to press a bit of clay in and that is your measure so that all your beads end up the same size. My bead roller makes 3 different shapes.

I used cocktail sticks to pierce the bead at each end. I think you can buy special bead pins for this purpose but I'm improvising! The cocktail sticks are useful for the baking process, because you can't really lay a round bead on a flat surface in the oven, it's better to suspend them. Otherwise you could end up with a gloopy mess. To suspend the beads I've been using aluminium take-away trays and cut slits in the edge to hold the cocktail sticks. It kind of works but it's fiddly and I'm sure there are far better ways to do this.

The black and white bead at the back was the next step - trying to incorporate two basic colours and add a pattern. It's a fairly straightforward process. You start by rolling a basic bead of any colour. Then you roll out two pieces of different coloured clay with a rolling pin -they have to be the same size so you need to have something to cut it with, like a tissue blade. Then you put one piece on top of the other and roll them together to create the spiral. So this was my first cane. You then slice little pieces off the end of the cane and press them onto the outside of the bead until it is covered with little swirls. It's obvious in the photo that I haven't quite got my tissue blade to make a clean cut as the swirls have been smudged. You can also see where the pieces have touched on the surface of the bead. I've read that this can be sanded down after firing but I've yet to try it.

This is my first post...

...but not my first blog. Although I'm hoping this one lasts a bit longer than the previous. Putting this into context, it looks like I'm going to have a good deal of time on my hands over the coming months and this seems like a fine opportunity to do something with it.

Firstly, I have to admit that when it comes to polymer clay I'm a complete novice. There: I've said it. I've bought a few slabs of clay, skimmed over a few beginner's books, even got as far as acquiring a second-hand oven for the princely sum of ten quid. Hey, it's not much, but I'm on my way.