Polymer Clay Beads

Usually when you say “put a nice face on it” you’re talking about making the best of a not-so-hot situation but in this case I’m being literal: put a nice face (cane) on it (the bead).

The addition of a fancy or more complicated cane to a focal bead adds elements of interest you may not have space for on smaller, more tightly designed beads. Personally, I like to make little scenes or stories on the focal beads, setting up simple floral canes and more complex insect, face and animal canes as a part of a whole. These are the fronts of 4 recent ones:

The reverse of these beads have butterflies and other little details - you can see them in this flickr page.

This is a week early I suppose - Canada Day isn’t until July 1st - but I was pretty happy with the cane! You can see that cane here on my Flickr. I used it to make some very simple slice beads and pendants, strung on satin-type cord with sliding knots.  This was probably my first ‘cookie cutter’ cane though I didn’t make it with a cookie cutter. I cut around a drawn design. The process is the same though. Now I have a head full of ideas for other similar canes!

Before I started with polymer clay I had never really heard of pillow beads. When I made my first few, my daughter ‘borrowed’ them to use as Barbie doll pillows so to this day they remind me of little doll minis rather than beads.

These are 2 each of beads I made with little clay fabric swatches I made a few weeks ago. They are all 5/8″ squares, plumply stuffed with scrap clay… and a fabulous way to use clay fabric. Since you can flatten sheets of clay in the pasta machine, to reduce the bumpy feeling, I often recommend pillow beads to new clay bead makers. If you are careful, there is minimal finishing to do, the shape is easy to hold to sand or varnish and does not roll away when being photo’d or worked on.

I have been making these tsumami kanzashi-inspired, faux fabric, clay flowers for almost 4 years now. And I have made many, many hundreds. Have I used more than a few? No. They sell even as ‘beads’ at shows but I don’t think I’ve done a thing with them. So I decided this after noon I would turn the larger one from the weekend’s batch into a pendant one way or the other!

I stared at the pendant for a while and was lacking inspiration - I am out of practice with jewelry design! - but I didn’t think my usual leather choker was going to do it for this one. In the end, I settled for two strands of glass beads. The pendant is large enough (about 2.5″) to hide the front clasp attachment and the necklace is nice and light.

I have (easily) 200 different canes in my stash, of various size, design and colour. Sometimes, I dig out a bunch and make clay fabric. The clay fabric gets used on any sort of item that has flat surfaces like pillow beads, cutter beads and pendants or pens.

When I’m dreaming this stuff up I usually work from one of two directions. I either unify a sheet by colour or by pattern. I use the term ‘unify’ loosely here, the idea is to use canes that may not otherwise get out to play much!

First, here is an example of by pattern. One section is of my current stock of mums and the other of roses, sliced and placed on a black base. Though the colours vary greatly, the pattern still ties the sheet together. The shapes are similar and the eye appreciates that.

Second we have a few of my by colour pieces. Black and white, coffee tones and accents and blue-greens. The colours are picked from a variety of sizes and designs but limited colour ways.

To see some more of the clay fabrics I did with this run take a look at my flickr. Next up, a lot of items! These pieces look small but after the slices get smoothed in and the sheets flattened on the pasta machine, I imagine there will be enough to make many dozens of items just from these few sheets.

Somewhere in the production of making a stack of new canes, beads and finished items for upcoming shows and online venues, I found the time to fool around with some new work and old favourites.

I hadn’t played with shrinky plastic for more than 20 years even though I’ve begun to see it around again, a lot. Friday I was stranded in a Michaels waiting for a thunderstorm to end and a pack called… The suns are based off of a large stamp of mine. One side shows the frosted side I coloured on, the other is shiny smooth top side. Tons of fun with these!

In the search for pretty icing on my food beads, I tried the very simple thinned out TLS as a sweet looking glaze. Voila! It worked. I thinned out a teaspoon of TLS with a few droppers of mineral oil and iced beads! Next, try with alcohol colouring.

The final ones are the end slices off some older face canes I reduced for my shop - I reduced them a little small (still perfect for beads though) so they are all a very reasonable $3.00 instead of the $3.50 or $4.00 my semi complex canes are. Distortion can sometimes be a fun thing.

Since I was on such a caning spree the last week or so, I reduced, wrapped, photo’d and updated the little web shop. Next on the list is make sets to send on to the Claychicks!

Here’s what’s new or refilled in the shop:

All of these can be nabbed in the shop - in the last page of the flower canes, roses or bugs and critters category, respectively.

Most of the time I make rose and other flower canes. They’re pretty, they’re typically symmetrical and they’re fast to make up, once you have the know how. I could make flowers all day! Actually, some days I do.

Bug canes are the reverse. I am not a fan of bugs, even the pretty ones, in real life. Like flowers, they’re sort of grown on me since I’ve begun caning. To make insect canes is a lot more work than flowers - there are usually more than two sub canes - sometimes, five or six - and there are usually several steps of reduction and combining. All of those factors make for big canes that can result in a huge pile of waste clay (bug guts anyone?) if you botch steps. So I make a bug for about every fifty or sixty flower canes I do!

This weekend, I made two. And there are a few others in stages - it’s disturbing, I have little bug bodies and antennae and wings on my desk that I had better not swat! - of production. Hanging out with the bug in the picture is the dark toned ‘marigold’ I made this weekend. The light tone one is coming up!

One of the best parts about selling your crafts is meeting nice and like-minded people. I love beads and I am always thrilled to what people do with beads. Particularly my beads!

Cindi of Daytona Luxury Earrings makes lovely earrings for her eBay store from a variety of quality materials. I was thrilled to see she has a whole section of earrings featuring polymer clay beads!

She bought a set of my face beads and then turned them into these lovelies which you can nab here. This is probably the best part of selling beads - other artists think up designs that I would never have thought of and yet work just right.

Here are some of the results of my Victoria Day weekend’s caning project:

There’s a little purple and white posie in there and an unphotographed black rose which went right to restocking my web store!