This week wasn’t a Make Finished (or even Unfinished) Objects week sort of week. It was the process of picking, blending, and making my canes for late winter / spring. The rose garden part is planted as I love to make rose canes. I’ve started with some tulips and crocus and windflowers are to follow.
Part of my process is also to make samples as I go to see what the canes look like – on beads, on surfaces. So here are 8 of the roses, by colour pair, on black and white base beads.
My kaleidoscope cane of a few weeks ago made some cute beads. A single, simple cane is used on the accent beads. The combination and a little stretch cord turned into a keychain bracelet – a smart alternative for the stretchy telephone cord keychains.
I got one of the metal body Makin’s Extruders as a Christmas gift. Like a lot of clayers I had one of the old type that were torture on your hands. As a result, I never really played with the tool despite some of the absolutely fabulous canes you can make with it – such as the work by Jennifer Patterson of Quilted in Clay.
This week, I made friends with my extruder. I mixed a few shades of pink, popped the square die on the extruder, and quickly cranked out a gingham cane!
Super simple but so fun. The scraps from it got lumped with some gold and pearl crumbs on my desk and put back through the square die to make a pink retro cane.
For week 2, I have my first successful cat cane. A good friend suggested we call him Fred. Fred graces my little bead here, sitting in a garden that is much too summery for Calgary in winter, staring at the dragonflies flitting lazily by. Will they be supper, he wonders. Or just entertainment…
For 2007 I have an ambitious schedule of projects – my Year of Clay. Week 1 has some Natasha beads and hearts.
Natasha beads are also an excellent idea of what you can do with scrap clay – instructions for Natasha beads can be found here.