canes

so here it is, my first post about making things! i thought i'd try my hand at making canes. i've made some simple bead jewelry in the past so it seemed a good idea to have a go at making my own polymer clay beads. 

i used a leaf pattern by Leigh Ross from her brilliant website polymerclaycentral.com. i've only had a quick browse through so far but it looks like it has loads of useful projects and tips and ideas. 

i don't have a pasta machine - which is a really useful way of blending different colours together - but a quick google led me to Valerie Hollis' handy guide to making a manual blend in polymer clay (without a pasta machine). 

i'll admit to being rather impatient so i ended up with more of a swirly pattern of bits of white in green clay rather than a lovely smooth blend of one colour to the next. i also used less white than green clay, as i wanted more green in the leaves, but the white got swallowed up very easily, so i reckon maybe you need to use quite a bit of white to make an impression in a darker colour. anyway, here it is:

my first ever polymer clay cane! i'm really pleased with it as a first attempt. i've wrapped it up in greaseproof paper and i'll probably stick it in the freezer before having a go at slicing it. 

i didn't do a very good job of reducing it neatly (i think i'll need a lot of practice!) and i had a lot of distorted cane at the ends. i sliced the bad cane into leaves to practice slicing. those leaves would have made very bad beads, so instead i put the slices onto a backing of flat clay and rolled them together:

i quite like the random distorted pattern it's made and am going to think about what to do with it!