BRAIDED CANE DEMO

About a year ago I was looking through Desiree McCrory's website http://desiredcreations.com/howTo_CABraidRainbowCane.htm and I found her "How To's".  There was a braided cane in there that I thought I would try.  I'm kind of lazy though so instead of doing a 3 color Skinner blend 3 times, I did a 2 color Skinner blend 3 times and made my plugs from that.  I didn't like the colors once I got them all together.  So, I thought I would do it again but this time I covered each plug in black so I would get some division between the canes and colors.

 

 

The piece in the middle is the cane I used to make the hearts in the front.  If you click on the picture you can see the hearts better.  I also put some pearl and translucent in each of the plugs before I made the cane. Then I rolled the plugs out to about 18 inches each and started the braid.  You can make them longer which I did with the square in the middle which gave me more colors centralized together.

This past Saturday I did a demo on my take of Desiree's braided cane at our clay guild meeting.  I made the two blocks before the meeting and the 3 plugs on the left were used to demo how to do the braided part of the cane.

 

This is what it looked like after I braided it.  Then I flattened it with my acrylic roller.  Desiree runs hers through the pasta machine but I don't.

 

Once I had the braid done, I folded it back and forth like you will see in Desiree's pictures.  Then I cut it with a ripple blade.  You can run the pieces through the pasta machine once you cut them or you can cut them with a straight blade.  I also cut pieces off the block on the corners.  I usually back my pieces up with a piece of black clay before I cut my pieces out.  These make great pendants.

 

This is the piece again after I cut it with the ripple blade.  If you don't like the piece you cut, you can put it back together and turn it around and cut it again.

 

 

 

I made this shoe pendant from the cane piece above it.  You can see where the pearl in the clay really makes it pop.

 

I'll post the pictures of what I make with the three new blocks of cane as soon as I can find the top of my work table.  LOL

 

 

 

CLAY GUILD CANE EXCHANGE

This past Saturday at our February clay guild meeting we had a cane exchange.  There were 12 of us that participated.  Some of us were seasoned (can't say older) clayers and some were brand new clayers.  It was fun to see all the different canes.  Now I have to decide what to do with them.

 

These are all the canes I received.  In my last blog I put up a picture of the ones I made.

 

 

 

I made big ones so I could cut them in half.  The one on the top right was a combination of a split cane and a barbed wire cane.  I used the ends to make pendants.

 

The top two on the right are the ends of the cut cane pieces pushed together.  They have Future on them.  The three hearts and two footballs have Magic Glos on them.  Love these colors, now I just have to figure out what I did.  I always say I'm going to write down what colors I use to make a cane and take pictures as I do it.  I listen to books on my Ipad while I'm doing clay and I get so involved I forget to write things down and take pictures.  I should write myself a note to do that but I would probably lose the note.  Getting old is not for the weak.

 

This is a picture of the heart pendant, bracelet and texture sheet that I sent to Tina Holden when we had our Polymer Clay facebook swap.  I stole the picture she put on facebook since she had all three pieces in one picture.  This was my first texture sheet.  It's too thick and too deep so I told Tina she could use it to feed the birds up in Canada.  LOL 

The large heart on the left is attached to a beaded Kumihimo key chain with hearts.  The bracelet is a Shambala bracelet made with the same flower cane that is in the center of the heart.