Tag: canes

Play With Canes

Steps

These are the picture steps on how to make a small sculpted bead from a cane slice. I use backgroundless canes for most of the beads I do like this but this method works for the canes that need backgrounds – ie: all the fancier flowers!

Once you have the shape, use a toothpick or sculpting tool to trace the veins in the flower or add other detail. That way, once you’ve baked the slice you can stain it a little to bring out the pretty detailing. Don’t forget you can put the hole in now or drill it after or add a small jump ring to back of the flower to make it into a charm.

The Batch Wrap Up

Last week-ish I posted how my batch of canes was going from blends to construction. In between then and now I took the weekend off (and long!) and visited family out of town. I nabbed a pile of clay. I got home and finished up those canes. Here’s a shot of a reduced cane in each pattern:

Canes

I think the next batch will be mostly purples, blues, pinks and will roll out towards the end of the month. I’m aiming for a twice a month sort of process on this, the same as I do with beads.

The Shop: Canes on ArtFire

artfire clay canes

Here’s the cane of the little snowmen beads from the other days and a couple of simple daisies. Now I’m back to my bead making after a word about ArtFire.

ArtFire is the upstart and primary competition for Etsy in North America. Which means they’re working on building features and traffic and buzz as quickly as they can. While sometimes I’m not exactly sure they’re avoiding the errors Etsy makes they certainly crank out lovely tools and features regularly and try to talk to the citizens of ArtFire land about it.