Polymer Clay Workshop

I posted this tutorial on Patreon on September 25th 2023. It is the October 2023 issue of Cane Builder. To find it you will have to scroll down to last year. This is one of my favorite canes ever. If you’ve followed me for a very long time, you will remember the fractal canes I made long before I even wrote Cane Builder. Now I’m interested in fractal ideas in nature. I think ferns are a little like this. The pattern can be repeated and repeated. I may have gone a little overboard with these, but I think they are so much fun!

Here is the important lesson I learned with these: You can make an intricate cane if you keep it one solid color! I would recommend a very light color against dark or a dark color against light. Intricate canes made with multiple colors loose their effectiveness when they are reduced. I had all but given up on such detailed canes. I truly did not expect this cane to work! This cane is larger than others, but if you stop at one of the earlier stages as I explain in the video and pdf, you can have a beautiful and effective tiny fern. I dream of making Queen Ann’s Lace which is also intricate, solid color and has a fractal-like quality to it. So many ideas, so little time!!! lol.

Of course these canes require the ability to make very thin slices. My premo fern have been sitting around for almost a year now, and they are delightful to shave off. I’ll be the fist to admit that is definitely the most difficult part. It’s worth a try though! Layered greenery makes a beautiful slab with or without flowers.

To see my current bracelets and raw canes for sale visit my Etsy shop Polymer Bead Workshop. I often close my shop when I’m out of town, but if you stick around you can find some treasures that may never be in stock again. I’m not the only one who sells canes though, and there are other artists out there selling unbaked fern canes if you want to try adding them to your project.

My new favorite thing to make is cuff bracelets! One place to purchase these is at https://www.etsy.com/listing/997931683/cuff-bracelet-with-edges-inlay-cuff

I made a complete video about how to make this bracelets. It can be found at : https://youtu.be/pwB75JME1kU

Did you know that if you bake clay face down on glass, every part that is touching the glass looks like glass!!! This is especially helpful for canes with translucent polymer clay. If you’ve ever experimented with translucent, you quickly realize that it’s no as see-through as you hoped. However, just like agates in a rock tumbler, translucent clay is much more translucent after being sanded or coated in resin. The easiest and most effective way of all is to simply bake it against glass (watch out for air bubbles and burning!). Unfortunately, most projects aren’t perfectly flat, so this trick is useless. Guess what!? These bracelets can be baked flat! (as you already know if you just watched the video).

When these strips are thin enough, they bend very easily. The beauty of these bracelet blanks is that all you need to do is to insert the strip into the end pockets and crimp them shut.

Now, I have to admit, making the thin strip isn’t easy. You don’t have to make them nearly as complicated as I have here. Most of these canes are taught somewhere on my Patreon page. https://www.patreon.com/polymerclayworkshop

Also, many of these canes feature a unique murrini technique that is also taught on Patreon. These canes rely on translucent clay and are most effective when they are shiny.

Here is another green blend. I hope you can start to see how you can change the blend to fit your specific needs. Remember to adapt this to fit the whole width of your pasta machine. Click for the printable stencil here.

I love this blend! You could just go from purple to turquoise, but I wanted just a little more contrast so I added white. Here is the printable stencil. Or you can make your own to fit the width of your pasta machine.

I’m excited to be adding to my new Cernit color blend directory! Many of you know that metallics effects are my favorite. The “copper” and “gold” are very similar. In my opinion “poppy red” in Cernit looks more like dark orange, but the extra red in it makes in look more copper to me when it goes in the blend. Here is the printable stencil. Be sure to adjust it to the width of your pasta machine.

I’m back to making blend templates! Unfortunately, I can no longer find the Premo colors that I used to make all of my previous blend. Nevertheless, all of the only templates are still a very good guide for what is possible. For this blend, I wanted a green that would blend from very dark to very light without the dark completely overwhelming the light. No matter what brand you use, the important thing is to curve the darkest color. I also made the darkest color stretch across most of the blend so that there would not be an obvious line in the blend where the color stopped. Download the printable template here.

I’ve continued my journey into making jewelry with my canes. I searched for bracelet blank, blank channel bracelet, and blank inlay bracelet. Here are two of the shops I found. KJewelry Metal, Yakutum, Natalie Parker Designs, and TDS Online store.

These canes are from the October 2020 issue of Cane Builder on Patreon.

Just looking at these tiles makes me think of adventure and travel.! My favorite thing is matching the different patterns and colors. I love the thin little solid bangles that break the complexity and tie the colors together.

At the time of writing this post a few of these bracelet are still available in my Etsy shop. https://www.etsy.com/shop/PolymerBeadWorkshop

I’ve been making canes for years. It’s finally time to make them into something! I’ve open a new Esty shop, PolymerBeadWorkshop, where you can get inspiration for all the many ways to make canework beads. The tutorial for this pattern is on my Patreon page.

Here I’ll show one way to make beads with a rectangular, geometric cane. If you had a square cane, like a kaleidoscope or tile, you could do this same thing by putting two side by side to make a rectangle.

If rainbow isn’t your thing, try to imagine this with the most beautiful kaleidoscope canes you’ve seen.

1. Cut a slice and wrap it around a log of clay. It takes some time to get the seam to fit perfectly. You can adjust the size of the log, or press and pull at the slice until the sides come together as smoothly as possible. If the clay is too sticky, let it set. If not, it will stick too soon and you won’t be able to make adjustments.
2. Slowly roll and pull the clay together to cover the log. This takes some practice.
3. Now that the log is covered it can truly be formed into any shape. For the round flat beads or cabs, I roll it into a ball and then flatten in.  Actually for most shapes I form it carefully into a ball before I decide what’s next. However, for this particular design, rectangular or cylindrical seem to be the easiest and most effective.

There are many ways to make metallic looking blends. Here is one way to make bronze.

Premo brand:

the dark is 2 parts cadmium red : 1 part black

the light is 3 parts white : 1 part orange

Here I’ve used four solid shades for this blend to make the cane from the 3D Star cane on Patreon.