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.