Mapping Canes: a Puppy
Last year I wrote about using a photograph to inspire a cane and how to map the cane out from the photograph. This time, I’m using a swatch of fabric a friend showed me on webcam to make a cane. She’d like something to use in favours for her daughters upcoming baby shower but she isn’t a caner. She made the cutest little sculpts and I offered to whip up a cane to make magnets, charms or pins with.
Safety Tips for Polymer Clay Use
On the Etsy forums there was a thread about studio safety inviting people to post their tips or hints for their medium. It was mostly amusing but it got me thinking. I posted some there, all ones I’ve learned from experience. There are more I’m sure!
- Put your sharps away
- Use sharp items carefully, not while distracted
- Make sure you have a first aid kit on site, always
- Hair up, glasses and particle mask on when working with power tools or powders
- Oven mitts. Use them.
- Slice down or away if possible
- Glues should also be put away
- Nail polish on hand for removal of superglue from self
- Do not waste good clay by letting it get dusty, melted to surfaces or semi-baked on your desk / containers. Keep baggies on hand.
- Accurate oven thermometers are very useful. You’ll still burn clay eventually. Be ready to open windows fast
And all these assume you’re fine with cooking clay in your regular oven, as I do, and just giving it a bit of an extra scrub occasionally. Otherwise, you want to add:
- Use a dedicated oven or a sealed baking tin to cook your creations in
Making Lilac Canes
After my mad cane making rush I have a little lilac blend left. I also have a Lilac Festival in May. So, a little foolin’ around made a not bad lilac cane.
This is the end slice after I started reducing the cane. The slice is about 2.75″ with the original cane being about 3.5″ tall. I took some of the picture notes from the process to make a sort of mini-tutorial on the cane!
DIY Clay Tools
The other day Lisa of Polka Dot Creations wrote about some of her DIY tools she uses in her clay work. I plan on nipping a few of the ideas - like the button hole placer! - and I had used a few others myself, already. She goes on to challenge her readers to show their own.
Well, I’ve done the handles for tools like she has. I have a stack of transparencies I use for measuring skinner blends and cane segments - I’ll put those up as a PDF download one day. I have colour chips. I have templates for covering pens like she does for bracelets. I have a string of ‘beads’ that are the beads made from a specific cutter size on a pasta machine sheet setting - say, a 5/8″ circle cut from my #1 setting on my atlas.
One that I actually took a picture of is a rack I made to help cook items bigger than my beads or that may have texture on them. I’ve never had much luck with fiberfill or cornstarch. The plus side is, I use this rack for drying items I’ve varnished, as well. In my poinsettia ornament post you can see the ornaments on the skewers in the rack. I baked them on it then varnished them there and then baked the varnish on. A very similar, albeit shorter, rack is sold by PolyTools and was the inspiration for mine.
The rack is made from aluminum flashing - essentially, glorified aluminum foil, in the flashing / siding section at your Home Depot, pretty cheap - and I’ve included a really basic how-to for this thing below: Read more
Poinsettia Ornaments
I’m lucky enough to have family that encourages me in my clay obsession. One aunt always buys my ornaments and this year I got her name in the family Christmas gift draw. She requested ornaments, in deep reds and greens. To me, that says Poinsettias!
So I start with some basic glass ornaments that I got in the post-Xmas sales last year. Cover them liberally with black marbled with gold, bake. It may sound dark for holiday gifts but it makes a dramatic background and the baked base layer means I stick fingers through the whole deal less often. Read more
Blob to Pendant
Sometimes when you make items to sell you just want to whip up a few simple items. Nothing time consuming or expensive but appealing and popular. For me, that tends to be simple pendants on basic cordage. Larger beads and my swirly hearts tend to end up on black cord at my shows.
A simple way of making these into pendants follows:
Read more
Year of Clay - Plant a Cane Garden
Valerie Hollis is a smart lady. On her site she has a project that I recommend for everyone who clays - actually, in some form for everyone, period. She calls it her cane garden.
I had started keeping slices from my canes before she published this page but mostly just out of habit - coming from a technical background, I’m a recorder and list keeper. I kept my old canes to see what worked, what didn’t. The physical slices live in a shoebox. My daughter plays with them. I scan them and add them to a folder by year before passing them over. The picture to the left is just a small sampling of a garden that’s been thriving the last 3 years.
Looking at it, I can see one of my first black and white canes and then one I did just this winter. Some canes from a 7 colour blend tutorial that Stargazer demo’d to us 2 years ago on PCC. A sample of what I made (the blue rose with no background) to show that yes, you could make good canes from the freshest Sculpey 3. An example of what to make from really awful canes (the bright red and yellow striped flower) where each stripe is a squished failed cane. Canes I made in response to challenges, to need, to requests.
10 ‘Green’ Tips for the Clay Crafter
In the spirit of International Earth Day - and because one of my goals for 2007 is to be a lot more ‘green’ - here’s a few tips for the environmentally friendly clayer:
- Batch your baking. Use less electricity, save energy AND money.
- Resist buying supplies you probably won’t use. I know, crafters HAVE to have the latest but if you stick to a list or budget it or plan it a little, you’ll save money AND all the packaging and shipping the company uses.
- Use printed one side papers. For notes, baking your clay on, and leaching your clay (make sure not to use the print side though!).
- Use clean, empty milk jugs or stiff plastic packaging for stencil and template making.
- Give old denim a new life by using it for making buffing wheels.
- Reuse attractive jars or chipped dishes as bases for clay projects.
- Reuse plastic bags as stuffing for your shipping.
- Recycle the old craft magazines and books or sell them to other enthusiasts.
- Give your old but sturdy beads and projects to your local school, daycare or other group that may use them. Declutter AND less garbage.
- Use the least harmful glues, paints and finishes you can. Dispose of remaining chemicals safely.
Reduce, reuse and recycle can be applied to a lot of crafty things I notice.
5 More Uses for Scrap Clay
Because the stuff keeps on piling up… Here’s 5 more uses for scrap clay to build on my first 5 Uses for Scrap Clay:
- Molds - made a face cab you like? a heart? mold it and be able to repeat the pretty! Or make texture plates / shallow molds like Ponsawan did here and then use those to make some of her bubble beads!
- Larger projects - sometimes a piece needs a little more to it than beads. Scrap makes excellent bulk, especially when you’re unsure of how well your bulky project will go. Paint or cover it with pretty colours like scrap dragons or my orangina vase.
- Prototypes - before commiting the time and resources to a new line, prototype it. This is a good place for whatever scrap you’ve got that is single colour. Good to use for prototype, fewer tears if it craters, not too hideous if it works.
- Reducing canes - instead of letting your cane ends distort crazily, add a plug of scrap to each end of the cane and reduce as you normally would. The distortion will be most concentrated in your scrap clay and you can cut that off without pain.
- Tools - form your clay into small tools. One friend made herself a small ‘holder’ to hold her lentil beads upright for photographs. Desiree (the queen of clay experimentation) built her own bead roller from scrap clay.
1 Ounce
In the interests of full disclosure - I make and sell canes. I also use other peoples canes in my work even though I make quite good canes.
I think a lot people don’t realize just how much you can get out of one small sample of cane - I’ve picked one ounce or 30ish grams.
I mostly make two types of canes - canes with translucent backgrounds, used to layer over a base, often on beads and canes that are meant to be sliced like cookies and used as slices, for buttons, beads or scrapbook parts.
Here is a photograph of 1 ounce of translucent canes(that’s one half pack of clay):
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