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.

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.