Polymer Clay Canes for Beginners 27 videos, step by step, beginner cane workshop
What people are saying about this tutorial.
jennifer rose
Just finished this first workshop on how to make canes, and I must say I learned so much. This is exactly what I have been looking for, someone who could explain cane making in a step by step that process that I could replicate. I watched the videos, went into my studio and began to create all of the canes Alice showed. I finally have results I can be proud of, and I say thank you so much for doing this workshop. My only question now is when do we get more workshops. If you are only going to take one online class let it be this workshop. Thank you Alice for your hard work, and your dedication to helping others learn the joys of polymer clay.
Online Workshops with Alice Stroppel
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Tomorrow morning bright and early I’m leaving my husband home with the dog and cat and I’ll be on my way to Orlando Area Polymer Clay Guild’s Fandango. I can only manage to get away for one day, but I just couldn’t miss all the fun with the Saturday night auction. Plus I could stand knowing all those clayers were only 2+ hours away and I wasn’t going to see them again this year.
My plan is to see if a can’t get the instructors and demo artists together again like last year for a short video. I have to laugh when I think about last year and how hard it was to get everyone in one place long enough to film. You can watch it here.
I made the Blue Moon above to wear to Fandango, I used my Pen and Ink Technique along with a ploymer clay shape and canes. The shape was made using a stamp from Barbara McGuire’s collection.
 This pendant was made by combining a black polymer clay base and black and white canes together, then drawing the split face onto white polymer clay squares.
The combo has proven to be well received and I’ll be teaching the pen and ink technique along with cane mapping mosaic class at Barbara McGuire and Ellen Prophater’s Woman Creative Art and Jewelry Center in Buford, GA.
For more information and to sign up visit BarbaraMcguire.com . If you aren’t able to attend one of my classes, you might be interested in the other classes offered by some very exciting instructors.
I’ve been working on several pieces to send to Woman Creative. These are a few face Pendants that use Barbara McGuire’s Vintage Hardware door plates Shapes rubber stamp (boy that’s a mouth full), polymer clay and my Pen and Ink technique.
You can order the rubber stamps from Barbara online, or better yet come and join me at Woman Creative on Saturday June 4th from, 11:00 to 5:00 and make one with me. I promise you, we’ll have fun.
I’m thrilled to tell you I’ll be guest artist in June at Barbara McGuire and Ellen Prophater’s new fabulous Woman Creative Art and Jewelry Design Center just outside Atlanta in Buford, GA.
The fun will begin on Friday night June 3, where I’ll be the guest of honor at an Artist Reception to kick off the week-end. It’s going to be a great time and I hope you can be there.
On Saturday and Sunday I’ll be delving further into two favorite techniques that I’ve developed using polymer clay. The first class on Saturday from, 11:00 to 5:00, will be Pen and Ink Polymer, using Polymer clay as your canvas you can soar as high as your imagination can take you.
 Pen and Ink You don’t have to “know how to draw” to have fun with this technique and create colorful results you’ll be proud to wear. Read more about it here.
The second class on Sunday, June 5th, from 12:00 to 4:00, will be Cane Mapped Mosaics. I’ve given away a 20 min. video cane mapped mosaics for free since the beginning of my blog. This class will bring us all together too explore the many possibilities with this technique and to take a closer look at color choices.
 Cane Mapped Mosaics Read more about this class here. I hope you can join Me and Barbara, Ellen, Sue and the rest of the ladies at Woman Creative the first weekend in June. To sign up for one or both of these classes visit Woman Creative Art and Jewelry Design Center.
 Cat and Mouse I love this black and white “story” bracelet, it makes me laugh. This cat is NOT a happy kitty. It seems the mice are having way too much fun.
 I decided to do a couple more girls on bracelets yesterday. This picture shows each side of one bracelet and on the right side of the picture, all of the side put together to show what it might look like if it were a flat drawing.
I just received an package in the mail containing a large set of markers and couldn’t wait to try them out. In fact, I’ll be doing more experimenting today.
I’ve always been the kind of person that has to have every color of……well…..whatever I’m interested in at the time. I own every color of embroidery floss from years ago, every color of premo, every color of crayon (just because I love the smell) and I’m sure I’ve thrown away more supplies because I bought every color and then didn’t use them before they dried up.
But I’m not a clothes horse, I don’t have a million pair of shoes, but I probably have a million different kinds of supplies. They make me happy, they make me feel like I could at anytime create something wonderful because I have everything I could ever need to create anything. Okay, that’s not really true, I don’t have ALL the supplies in the world, but I’m working on it.
 These bracelets are really fun to wear because from the front, when it’s on your wrist, a person can’t really tell what it is. It just looks like an interesting, colorful bracelet. But then they say something about it and you show them the whole drawing, they are amazed. It’s pretty cool actually.
Then when you tell them it’s polymer clay, pen and ink, they want to know more. Mostly they say they can’t draw and could never do it. It’s really not true, everyone can draw something even it it’s just shapes and trust me shapes can be very interesting. But these girls are very basic line drawings.
Anyway, this is the face for the second bracelet. They will both be for sale in my Etsy Shop by the end of the day. Thanks for checking in.
When I came home from Woman Creative – Art and Jewelry Design Center just outside Atlanta, I came loaded down with rubber stamp shapes from Barbara McGuire’s collection. I started playing around with them and because I am so involved with my pen and ink technique I decided to marry the two elements. I, as always have created something I think if incredibly fun and a bit off beat, but I’m diggin’ ’em.
I have tons of old jewelry and buttons and well just stuff (cool stuff mind you) that I’ve be gathering over the years and have decided to continue to use those bits and pieces to accent my work. I’ve added a cool button to the top of the face pendant above.
The pen technique is the one I demonstrate in my video for sale in my Etsy Shop and the shapes are rubber stamps from Barbara McGuire’s collection. The ways you can use the pen and ink technique are endless. Use some of these ideas of mine or dream up some of your own. The sky is the limit and the only thing keeping you from floating away is you thinking you can’t fly.
Okay, okay, you can’t REALLY fly, but you can feel that way sometimes if you lose yourself in your creativity. Stop judging yourself and you will be more than surprised at what you can create. I’m talking to myself as much as to you, I produce things I’m proud of when I make them for the joy of it, not for the dollars I might gain.
Learning to let them go to someone else is the next big stumbling block for me, but I’m doing much better at that too. I can’t wear, look at or hang all the things I make, so I find it much easier to let them go than I did in the beginning.
I’ve also been playing around with whole shapes. I like this girl and really wanted to keep her, but I’m putting her in my Etsy shop. I have ideas for oh so many more. Here I am again, too many ideas and not enough time. Oh well, there’s always tomorrow. Maybe I’ll see you then too.
After I posted my girl yesterday, I saw what I couldn’t see while I was working on her. Her jaw was way wrong. I had corrected it a bit while working on her, but not enough. It’s funny how you don’t really see something until you back away from it. In this case taking the photo and posting it, then looking at it later online made me see what I could before.
I think I was excited by how the coloring was coming out and the use of the canes in combo with the drawing and didn’t really want to look at the face.
So last night I operated and she looks a bit better. Thanks for sticking we me through all this experimentation. For all those out there that say you can’t draw…..sure you can, you just have to look harder at what you’re putting on the canvas. We all know when something looks wrongand we can fix it.
Now to fix her nose……:)
P.S. I first was introduced to some of the colored pens I use by Kathleen Dustin. She is the master and a wonderful instructor. If you should ever have an opportunity to take a class with her, you should run, not walk to do it.
I just have been having a fabulous time yesterday and today. Had a dental appointment but there was a terrible storm and I have to drive over an hour to get there, so I didn’t go.
That meant I got to stay and continue experimenting with different shapes to hold my pen and ink and polymer clay.
This was great fun, but it’s still a WIP. Needs beads and a chain. The pen technique is the one I demonstrate in my video for sale in my Etsy Shop and the shape was a rubber stamp from Barbara McGuire’s collection.
I’ll post it when I have it finished. I have several more pieces that I really am excited about and I’ll be sharing those with you too.
On this piece I drew the woman and then layered slices of canes off to one side. I like the way it came out.
I can’t stand to throw anything away, even when things go a bit wrong. I was working on two pen and ink bracelets (using the techniques shown in my video tutorial for sale in my Etsy shop) for Woman Creative – Art and Jewelry Design Center when somehow my oven when crazy and I had a couple of scorched bracelets on my hands. Not totally black, but not fit for sending to Ellen at the Center.
But today as I was taking them off the blanks, I just couldn’t throw them away. So I began to play around with them and I cut them apart and repositioned them on other pieces of clay and I began to really like the antique look of the pieces.
What didn’t work as one of my usual bracelets really did work in a different setting. In the beginning I thought I might want to add some more antiquing to them, but I really like them just the way they are.
I’m thrilled to have saved them and I think I might be on to something else. But that’s the way it is, too many things I want to do and too little time.
I guess what I really wanted to share with you was that sometimes what you think as failure might just turn into success, never give up!
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