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.
See what happens when I start thinking about merchandise for galleries on the beach. I was mixing colors and making canes for leaves and plants for my flamingos and started thinking about my fish mosaic.
I ended up with a mermaid……………..
When I mix my colors, I try to mix them with the same amount of grey to get my base color and then add white and skinner blends. I am looking at the book Color Inspirations and am interested in play with the “mud” idea too. But for now I’m mixing grays with my color blends to get a muted result.
Then I make different canes using the mixes and Skinner blends. When I’m ready to work on a project, I have canes that blend and go together nicely.
Polymer Clay Mermaid Close Up
I used the coral Skinner blend in each of the canes. Sometimes as the main body of the cane and sometimes as accents. Her hat was leftover bits of mixed color and Skinner blend. It didn’t make a very big cane and I only got six slices off of it, but I only needed four to make her a smashing hat. I used the other two slices on a fish bracelet I’ll show you in the next post.
I used the same method to build this mermaid as I do for my fish mosaic except I’m layering the canes instead of butting them up next to each other. It’s less labor intensive, but doesn’t create the same level of sophistication as the mosaic work. It just depends on what effect you are trying to achieve and how much time you want to spend.
To see how I do my mosaics, just sign up for my newsletter and watch a video for free.
I love these blue bottles and I’m quickly running out of them. Here’s one I did for a fund raiser at Highlands Art League. It made $135 for the league. I was delighted as there was some incredible art work auctioned off that evening from some very talented artists.
I started mixing some truly wonderful greens to make some items for a shop in South Florida. I thought I would try some flamingo things. A bracelet might be good and naturally salt and pepper shakers.
I don’t know why, but flamingos have always sold well for me no matter what medium I was working in. I haven’t ever figured it out. They are so wonderfully tacky, you would think people would avoid them like a bad hair day.
But I have them in my 1970 big, turquoise bathroom along with a really funky painting of mermaids my father did in the sixties, not cute but with that sixties “look”. The flamingos make me laugh, and maybe that’s the answer, they make people happy.
When I say turquoise bathroom, I really mean turquoise. all the walls but one are turquoise, the whole shower, the floor, the toilet, and the sinks are turquoise, amazing. But there just isn’t anything to be done about it, so we decided to like it.
That leads me to what I did today instead of making fabulous canes out of my fabulous new colors. I painted the one wall and the ceiling of my funky turquoise bathroom. and what color did I paint it you ask? I am ashamed to admit….white. ugh…..Can you believe it. My husband and I don’t seems to agree and so we don’t decide. I believe painting the wall white was not deciding.
But now that it’s painted, I think just maybe, with all that turquoise, maybe white will help the mermaids from trying to leave the painting and run away from home.
The good news is that it is finished and tomorrow I can work on my clay projects.
Flamingo
This is a container I covered several years ago to hold cotton balls. Not a very pretty container, but as I said, the flamingo makes me laugh and it’s functional.
After spending more time with this new color primer, I can’t wait to try some of the exercises. I’ve done some of them before from Maggie’s website and videos, but there is so much more in the book and I can’t wait to continue to experiment. Maggie has three videos that will help you when you get to Chapter Five, Mixing Colors That Flow.
These are wonderful videos and will help you, but having the book brings it all together. The long awaited book is finally available at Amazon today
I’m most excited that Maggie will be posting “Weekend Extras” on her blog, to encourage you to go through each of the exercises in the book. She will start with tips for the very first exercise, “Testing Package Colors.” you will be able to ask questions and post comments.
Lindly’s blog is full of color information and links, with a fabulous link to Dulux paint in the UK with a color system that is really helpful.
Lately, I’ve been following Dora’s Explorations Blog and her polymer clay cane experiments. She seems to enjoy the complicated canes and I understand the challenge.
Her plaid canes are fabulous and there are many more just waiting for you give them a try. She is generous to share these tutorials on her website.
If you want to challenge yourself, take a look at her newest cane tutorial, “Joy of Hex“. It free and the pattern possibilities are endless. Thanks Dora for sharing your talent with us.
Several days ago, I promised you a video showing how to use objects you might have around the house to imprint polymer clay projects. Or you may want to use that interesting found object to embellish one of your creations.
I “found” all of these items while I was clean out and cleaning up. You might say I “re-found” them. Most are things I have collected over the years because they were interesting and I just knew one day I’d “make something from them”. ( I think there is a name for this illness……..most of you have it too I think!) Some are just everyday items.
Even my husbands work space didn’t escape the scavenger hunt……don’t tell him though, he gets scared when I venture into his garage with that look on my face.
Today, I’m working on samples and tomorrow or the next day I’ll post the video. Start looking around you, I know you’ll find lots of things to play with. Roll out some fresh clay and experiment. Or be ready with your treasures for when you watch my new video and we can experiment together.
Just remember, if you use something from your kitchen for clay, you won’t want to use it again for food.
While I was searching for the author of the eye cane tutorial at the bottom of this post, I came across this tutorial from Naama Zamir. She Posted this tutorial on March 1st, 2009! I made my Ancient Mystery Bracelet on Aug.10, 2009.
I didn’t see her tutorial until 10 minutes ago. In fact I had already started this post to look for the author of the eye cane tutorial.
Ancient Mystery I
This post is to acknowledge that she thought of the technique before I did! It just must have been floating around in the air and landed on me. Take a look, she explains how to do it wonderfully.
Now to the reason I was searching the internet… this ikat cane tutorial.
Ikat Eye Cane
Do you know who wrote this tutorial for an Ikat Eye Cane? It was on a website several years ago.
I printed it out and I use it sometimes for my face canes. I copied and pasted it into another program to print it to save ink. I usually labeled things I printed out with the author’s name and the website address. But somehow I’ve lost that information.
I’ve searched for it online for quite some time with no luck. I’m afraid that it is no longer available. I would like to suggest this cane for my face canes and send people to this tutorial. If it is no longer available, then I would like to be able to share the technique.
If you know the author or the website address, or someone who might be able to help me, would you please leave a comment or email me at alice@polymerclayetc.com? Thanks in advance for any help you can give me.
Here’s how this started! I was going to shoot a video to share about all the items I found while cleaning that I can use with my clay work.
But as always, I had to clean up my clay space before I could begin. There sat slices of canes that I used in my (not finished yet) Polymer Clay Collage Project…. you’ll see a line of red squares across the bottom. Some were slices that I messed up and then there was this small little piece of cane left.
If you have been following this blog at all, you know me well enough to know that I do not like to make scrap clay. So, I layered the messed up slices with a layer of black #7 on the pasta machine. Then I sliced the remaining cane and added those slices with the black layers in between. Ending up with a new cane.
Why I didn’t start filming this for you, I don’t know, except that I didn’t know that it was going to come out this cool.
I sliced this cane into thin slices and added them to a sheet of black. Then placed the whole thing on my bracelet. It looks pretty good, I liked it anyway.
Then I had just a couple of slices left of this scrap cane (and I’m laughing here)! I didn’t want to scrap the rest of the cane I didn’t use because I liked it.
So I decide to play with what I had left. this next bracelet was the result and I like it way better than the first one.
Ancient Mystery II
I laid the left over slices out on a skinny strip of black and ran it through the pasta machine. It was ragged along the edges and I kind of liked that, so I put it on a layer of ecru clay and covered the bracelet form, added dots and there it was.
It was interesting and fun to experiment and the best part is I made something out of clay that was going to become a gray blob.
But..I still haven’t made the video with the found objects to use with clay. It will have to wait now, I have a special request for more girl bracelets in my Etsy shop, so I better get moving.
I’ve listed the other two bracelets there, so cross your fingers that summer sales will happen.
As winner of the Fish Mosaic Contest, Adrienne Lindsey will be receiving the perfume pen with one of my girls on it and as a bonus, (she doesn’t know this yet) I’ve sent her a note card with her fish on the front. I’m sending her a pdf by email with a layout for two note cards that she will be able to print over and over again. She can sell them, give away sets to friends or just use them herself for thank you notes etc. All she has to add is the envelopes.
(I also did a pdf for Laura Lang’s fish too.)
I’ve added this service to my Etsy shop, for those who don’t have the software to do it themselves. If you do have the software, you should consider using your artwork in this way. It really makes sense, you can sell the original and still continue to make money from the item. That’s what other artists do with prints of their originals. Why not Polymer Clayers? Gotta think outside the box.
I just looked at Naama Zamir’s two fish that she made after viewing the video. They are so cute, they would make darling cards or prints for that matter.
How funny is this? I haven’t had much time to work on this new project. The Fish Mosaic Contest entries were coming in and I was having fun and other life stuff got in the way.
But part of “in the way” was having to clean off some shelves in my studio. I save everything, much to my husband’s dismay. The box in the picture is “the box” that I think everyone that shops at Sam’s club here in the states bought as a Christmas gift “for that person that you have no idea what to buy” It’s a funny gift full of little candies that look like little bottles of liquor.
When I saw the box, I was going to throw it away, but I thought maybe it might make an interesting addition to my “project”. I need to cover up the liquor logos, add some back ground or something else to the clay. But maybe this could turn into something fun! OR maybe not. (This may just turn into one of those projects that goes on for years.)
Tell me what you think. Should I continue, or forget about it?
Fish Mosaic Contest Winner to be announced on Friday. You’re gonna love it.
If you are new here, don’t forget to look at my videos. Just click on the link on the left hand side of the page or at the top. Or for the Fish Mosaic tutorial, just join my email list at the top right hand side of the page.
I wanted to do something with my profile face canes and really wanted to do something different. I used the piece of glass from my mosaic work and lots of canes both old and new and have begun a picture. I’ve placed a piece of white paper behind the glass so that the work would show up better. So right now there is no background.
This is stage one. I’m going to bake it now and add more to it later. I think, after it comes out of the oven, I’ll add a skinner blend background and see where that takes me. Stay tuned.
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