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.