A couple of weeks ago I ordered a bunch of cuff bracelet blanks from Melanie West of http://melanieweststudio.com/ncindex.htm. Literally. I said, whatever fits into the envelope for standard air mail to here. So 24 little blanks arrived at my door yesterday.
Here’s the prototype:
From this blue-purple colour theme:
From this pattern sheet I made quite a lot, including a large photo behind the cut.
I get asked occasionally (ok, often) how do you get the little pictures on those cute beads. So I launch gamely into my explaination of how you take a base of clay and some canes (“canes? what are those?” “yeah… one thing at a time”), slice the canes up very, very thinly, layer the slices to build up a picture on the sheet. Smooth the sheet a lot. Then use the sheet like fabric.
Pattern sheets are best for beads where seams won’t matter too much. Pillows, flat discs, pendants and so on. And faux-fabric applications like the kanzashi in the picture coming up.
So here are the canes, a mixture of mine, Carolyn of CMJ Creations‘ and Charlene of CATherien Arts. I’m lucky, I have tons of canes to fool around with 
Following the demo on Friday I’ve written up a mini tutorial for the ivy leaf – it’s over here. A friend, Rosi of MastRPiecesbyRosi, has already tried the cane with excellent results!
This Friday (May 5) I’m going to demo a simple leaf cane using a green to light green Skinner blend. From the simple leaf I’ll make a more complex ivy leaf and from that, time and resources permitting, I’ll make an ivy sprig cane.
