Fruity hearts

Nothing special, just my favorite fruit canes. Shaped into hearts this time :)

An opportunity for european clayers

A great opportunity to get published in the album which will be sent to USA to the Synergy II Conference (a place I only can dream of going to for now :) ). Check out for details in Anke's blog.
Anke is writing that they will select a good number of people, so I think I will give it a try. I just need to take a few good pictures of my works :)

Spring in autumn :))

I have not been doing much in the past few weeks. All I made is assembling this necklace and earrings. They were made on order following my flower bracelets.


That's me trying out new accessories:

Black and white bracelet and flower beads tutorial

We'll be making black and white flower beads like these:


The technique I am going to demonstrate below, has been created by Israeli artist Edit Zoota. Make sure to check out her Flickr album and Etsy shop! Edit generously shared her genious idea with the whole world. For me (and, I think, for other caners as well) this discovery has the same importance as Judith Skinner's technique of making colour blends using pasta machine.
It is a long process, so arm yourself with patience :) You need a lot of patience when making canes. To make a neat cane you have to pay a lot of attention to each detail, do everything without a hurry, smoothen every bit of a cane...

First of all we'll make a flower cane. Cut your petal cane into a few pieces. 5 or 6 is optimum for this method. More petals will make it difficult to remove background without distorting a cane.

Roll out a medium thick sheet of dough. Wrap it around the cane.

Next we'll fill our cane with a background. It is a very important step, because the shape of your cane depends on the accuracy of your background. Since you are going to remove background you cane use just a scrap clay for it. I use this particular piece of scrap clay for background for the third time already, so it is a great economy. Make a triangular cane out of your scrap clay and fill the space between the petals. To avoid your petals getting a square shape after reducing make sure that you put enough background between petals. See how I add another layer of scrap clay on top of the triangular cane between the petals, so that the height of the background between the petals is the same as the petals.

Cover petals with clay and put a final layer around the whole cane. There is no need to save on background clay here :)

Reduce and cut the cane. I've made a few canes of different size.

Clay does not stick to the dough, that is why you can easily remove it. Remove all of the background and putt your canes and used scrap clay in cold water. Leave pieces to soak for a few hours. Three hours is normally sufficient to dissolve most of the dough.

Be very careful whem you take canes out of the water. At this moment clay is very sensitive to your finger, so be sure to hold your cane very lightly, do not rub the surface of clay with your fingers.
Here you can see, that there is some dough left between the petals. You can brush it off with an artist's soft brush. Keep dipping your cane and a brush constantly into the water.

You can remove the most stubborn dough with a needle. Very lightly, without pressing, pass your needle between the petals, releasing the dough, then wash it off, using a brush.
Leave you canes and cleaned scrap clay to dry for a few hours. Overnight, perhaps.

Now the cane is ready to be used. Cut off a few slices of it. I used embossing tools and Sculpey tools for shaping my flowers. Although, I guess, you could use thick knitting needles for this as well.

With your fingers smooth the edges of petals of your flower. Shape the slice cane into a flower as you can see it on the picture below:

Then the usual - bake, sand (no picture there :)) ), glaze and make into a jewellery.


You don't have to shape cane slices into flowers, they are just the same pretty as the simple flat slices:

That's all from me :) This post was written with a big gratitude to Edit Zoota. Edit, thank you for your discovery and for your generousity!

Flower bracelets

The revolutionary Edit Zoota's technique of making backgroundless canes opened plenty new horizons for me and other caners :) One of my results of using this technique you have already seen in this holly leaves bracelet. This week I have been making backgroundless flower canes. They resulted in many bracelets :)) I only wanted to make two or three, but, as always, I got carried away, and I think that I will have about 15 bracelets eventually :)))
Bracelets all together:

And bracelets individually. Which one do you like the most? :)))
1

2

3

4

5

6

7

At the moment I am working on black and white flowers, taking pictures of the process at the same time. So tomorrow or a day after tomorrow I will show you the whole process of making canes with Edit Zoota's method (I asked Edit for permission :)) ) and making flowers from canes slices :) Stay tuned! :))

Holly bracelets

I have tried a play-doh technique invented by Idit Zoota for making canes of unusual shapes (you can read more about it and see videos at Yonat's page), and I came up with these holly leaves.

I've added some red glass beads and finished leaves into festive christmasy bracelets.

New blog on the block! :)))

Check out this new blog by Anna Panik, she makes incredibly beautiful flowers of polymer clay!

Click here!

Faux polymer clay pebbles

I forgot all about these pebbles I made some time ago. One of my Etsy buyers asked me about them recently, which is why I took the beads out of the box and drilled holes in them.
They are very pleasant to touch, very smooth, and have a vice soft shine, being polished with Dremel.


I do not know what to do with them, though :)) Should I make an elastic bracelet? Or something on a rubber cord?..



You can see all of my pebbles separatly with explanation of additives here

Flowers sampler

I have been tidying up my box with canes, and I decided to use up all my old petal canes. Here what I made with them :) These are all pendants.

All flowers separately. Which one is your favorite? :))




The backs of pendants:

"Fence flowers" bracelets and more

I have finally finished a few items and assembled them into jewellery.
I call these bracelets "fence bracelets", because they remind me of fences, almost hidden behind tall flowers :))

All five bracelets on my hand. All together they look like a knight's armor :))

I think, I've mentioned before that Jael's works inspired me to start playing with polymer clay. Now I have tried to make "bone" beads like hers (and Karen Lewis's, of course :) ), using my canes :)

Details:




More items to come tomorrow! :)))

Bookmark

I had some leftovers of blue petal cane, which I used to make tiny blue flowers. I added a few slices of leaf cane, combined them all together, and made this bookmark.
I think it is very sunny and summery bookmark :))

I was thinking on how to attach seed bead in the middle of each flower. The head pins have too large heads, which hide the seed bead. So I decided to make a loop at the end of a pin with a seed bead, fixed in that loop.
Larger photo: