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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I’ve been busy this week making slices to exchange at a retreat I’m going to in September. Very excited about it and I’ll tell you more about it another day.
I’ve also been making a zillion, yes that many, skinner blends for a fun new workshop I’ll be teaching in Sarasota, FL at Beads, F.O.B., Inc. on Saturday, August 20th – 10am – 4pm and Sunday the 21st from 10am – 1pm.
Marty Montague is the owner of Beads, F.O.B., Inc and she and Karen Johnson is manager, designer and teacher at the shop. They both attended my pen and ink class last month and we all had such a good time Marty asked me to teach a cane/bead class for her. I’m delighted.
It’s a two day workshop for people new to polymer clay, don’t worry you won’t have to buy lots of equipment, I have pasta machines to share, but you will be investing in lots of clay. The up side of that is you will be “stocking” your cane pantry with enough colors, blends and canes to make hundreds of beads or pendant with the techniques I’ll show you.
It’s also a workshop for those who have been playing with clay for awhile but have just never tried caning and are ready to take the plunge.
I’ll be showing you how I make reasonable sized to small canes to use all kinds of fun projects. I never make giant canes because I don’t like to have lots of one cane, I’d rather use my clay stock to make hundreds of small interesting canes. It makes it easier on your pocketbook if your just starting out.
I’ll spend some time with skinner blends, I’ve learned a few important things over the years that I’ll share. Plus we’ll be using the skinner blends to make many different canes and beads.
So here’s what you’ll be learning
- Create a Skinner blend
- Make these basic canes: stripe, checker board, jelly roll, bulls eye,
flowers and some fun little accent canes.
- Use tons of tips gleaned from my years of practice. If there is an
easier way, I’m going to do my best to find it.
- Learn several ways to make beads.
- Finish a simple yet striking pendant.
This strand of beads are just a sample of the beads you’ll be able to make from the canes we produce in this workshop.
 I’m still making samples for this class and will be posting them over the next couple of week. To find out more about this class download my pdf, to register call Karen or Marty at 941-921-0871
I’m not sure if their August newsletter is out yet, but it will be shortly. You can download it from the front page of Beads, F.O.B.
 Carole, Ellyn, Charlene, Sydney, Tyra, Marty, Terri, Vicky, Pat, Karen It was a hot day in Central Florida, but we had enough fun to make up for it. This was a great group of woman who created some fabulous work. I’m always inspired by the diversity of the pieces. Even though we all start at the same place we end up with such different creations, it’s a joy to witness.
Most of these shape were created with Barbara McGuire’s Antique Door Plate stamps. You can purchase them from me, just leave a comment on this post if you’re interested.
Here are the works of art in the order of the stairs ….. pendants first.
 Carole Carole wanted a blue surround and made quick work of putting together blue canes for her soulful girl. Love her eyes.
 Ellyn Ellyn and I are on the same wave length, I love mermaids and this one is going to be such fun to wear.
 Charlene Charlene freehanded this cool ribbon cat and step away from the rest of the group with a gold surround for her face. Charlene is President of the Orlando Area Polymer Clay Guild that sponsors the Fandango retreat. You should think about attending next year.
 Sydney Okay, so Sydney just kept adding until hers is now too big to wear and is going to grace the front of a journal. A mixture of canes and ink and markers, can you tell which is which? Can’t wait to see the finished piece. Sydney is involved in the Florida Gulf coast Polymer Clay Guild, if you live in that area you should check it out.
 Tyra Tyra created her own drawing of this interesting mythical character and we were all impressed. Lots of wonderful detail.
 Marty Marty kept saying she couldn’t draw and didn’t like her pendant at first, but by the end of the class she walked out with it around her neck. I think she was mistaken about the drawing part.
Marty is owner of Beads, F.O.B., Inc. in Sarasota. If you’re over that way stop in and tell her and Karen I said hi.
I don’t have a pendant picture for Terri. Terri, if you have a picture send it to me….. please.
 Vicky Vicky created these fabulous faces on her own shapes. I just love the colors and her imagination. Vicky has a website with more of her beautiful work displayed.
 Pat Pat outlined her face in red, a great accent against the black. Fun! Love those lips.
 Karen Now Karen’s face is right up my alley too. It’s strange and funky, and yes very cool, I love that.
 Terri Terri created this sweet girl and used her imagination to cover a mistake in coloring. I know she’s going to love wearing this bracelet.
 Carole Carole combined the pen and ink with a hair cane to come up with this unique bracelet. There is three different faces, it’s really cool.
 Ellyn Ellyn has three faces on her bracelet as well. I love the softness of this face and the coloring of the hair. She emailed me the next day saying she wore it home and it made her smile. YES!!! that’s my goal, so mission accomplished.
Ellyn works at the Vero Beach Museum of Art, check out what they have to offer.
Not everyone finished their bracelets in class but will finished them at home I hope. Send me pictures everyone.
Thanks to Sydney for taking pictures of everyone work, I had to borrow some of hers. She also has an album she created. Take a look.
 Red Hood This morning I started to do samples of what we are going to be doing in class on Saturday but I ended up drawing a grown up Red Ridding Hood. Grown up you might ask, well the story goes that the wolf died and she lived to grow up right? So here she is, with a silver frame ready for the eye pin and a chain.
Okay so the truth is the hood just showed up by itself and I colored it red. I use photos or pictures as my guides, but I don’t sketch out my work ahead of time. I just dive right in and begin and correct as I go letting the piece create itself.
That’s why I like working with polymer clay as a base and my pen and ink technique, I can easily correct most lines and sometimes colors. I do most of the black work first and add color at the end, then reapply black here and there.
I probably would benefit from more planning including sketching the ideas in my head instead of just making notes, but then I’m not so sure how things like the red hood would ever happen. But it’s something to consider.
International Polymer Clay Association’s Polymergence editor Suzanne Ivester wrote a wonderful article in this month’s newsletter entitled All About Sketching! It’s an interesting read, you’ll enjoy it.
This cat just called to me, no explanations, no excuses. I’m going to post this and get back to my original plan..samples…step by step samples.
I’ve been working on finishing up the face pendants I created at Fandango. This is the first one and I’ve mixed black and white canes with the pen and ink face. I also made black and white beads and strung the whole thing on black Buna Cord.
This is like one of the projects planned for my up coming class on the 25th of June here in my studio. We’re going to make a pen and ink bracelet first, then spend the rest of the class working on the necklace.
The class is full, but I will be posting another one for July 16th, so if you think you might be interested, mark your calendars.
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.
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.
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