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.