As usual, I’m a little late coming to the party, but I read today about NaBloPoMo, which is short for National Blog Posting Month. The idea is to post once a day during the month of November. Well, heck, that’s not really a stretch for me, now is it? So, I’m joining in despite having spent most of the first week of this month in a fog of taking care of other things online and not posting as much as usual.

If you’re up for it, join the party! And be sure to add me as a friend, because right now I look darn lonely sitting there advertising that “Lisa Clarke doesn’t have any friends on this social network yet.” I’m getting flashbacks to grade school - didn’t have any friends in that social network either. *sigh*

Anywho, I have a new tutorial to announce. Yay! My NJPCG buddy Dot has a nifty Scroll Cane tutorial she is sharing with us. I’m thinking of trying this in the Evolution of a Color Scheme colors when I finally get back to working on that. Which will be soon. I promise.

Back to NaBloPoMo for a moment - they have groups you can join there. I don’t for a moment think that I will have any time to really participate in these groups, but one of them struck me as a very simple thing to do as part of my regular post. 30 Days of Thanks is pretty much just what it sounds like. So today I will end my post with one thing I am thankful for:

I’m thankful for many big, important things that I will touch on as the month progresses, but for today, let’s just say that I am thankful for peaceful moments when children are at school and husband is at work, where I can sit and quietly type for a while. Soon one of the boys will be home, followed shortly by the other, and lastly by Neil, and I will be happy to welcome each of them back. But I do appreciate the quiet of this moment.

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In our quest to build a color scheme from the mosaic pictured above, we have developed three color recipes and added some white so that we have six colors. Now we have to decide if we are happy with these hues. We’ve managed to match these colors pretty closely with those that we originally picked out of the mosaic, but that may not be enough. No matter how scientific we try to be about getting where we’re going, we really only know when we’ve arrived by our gut reaction. Right now I’m going for an emotional response more than anything else. When I look at that pile of clay, does it “feel” the same as when I look at the mosaic of images?

My gut tells me I still have some changes to make. For one, the green is still not yellow enough for my taste. Additionally, I think I may have made a mistake with the pink I chose to copy. I’m now thinking that I would prefer a slightly warmer pink, with less of a tendency toward the purple. I’m also thinking that I’m making these recipes too complicated at this point. I’m going to start from scratch with the green and the pink.

I like these colors. I think they’re going to give me the feeling I’m looking for. For those of you playing along at home, these are the final recipes I used for each color:

• BLUE: 3 Teal + 1 Granny Smith
• GREEN: 3 Granny Smith + 2 Yellow + 1 Sweet Potato + 1 Leaf Green
• PINK: 3 Red + 2 Yellow + 1 Maroon

The colors are Sculpey III colors. Additionally, Teal and Maroon are discontinued colors, that I just happen to have stockpiled. Polyform has a handy PDF with formulas for recreating the discontinued colors, if you need it.

We won’t truly know if we chose well until we have a nice variety of canes piled up to look at. Here’s a little teaser. I’m not sure how these colors are going to work out, but we can find out next time…

…after I’ve replenished my supply of Yellow Sculpey

We’re perilously close to needing a name for this color scheme. Hope you’ve got your thinking caps on!  As I mentioned before, I’m going to let you make suggestions for what to call this color scheme.  The owner of the winning entry will receive a little prize - not to mention the honor and prestige of having his or her name forever associated with those colors on the Polka Dot Creations website.  But more on that next time!

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If you recall, we are trying to create a color scheme in clay that will evoke the same emotional response as this mosaic. We’ve selected the colors we want to replicate and now must decide what packages of clay we need to get us started. I do all of my caning in Sculpey III (read this, if you’d like to know why) so when I refer to clay colors, it will be Sculpey colors.

The blue dot looks to me like Teal straight out of the package. The green looks a lot like Leaf Green with some Sweet Potato. And the pink seems like Maroon with some Violet. I got to work mixing them up, eyeballing the proportions and making notes of what I used.

For the most part, my instincts were right on, although I had some trouble with the pink. I ended up also adding a bit of red and white. I was happy with the way the dark colors on the right mixed up, so I added some white to them to see how they compare with the original images. Remember, what I really want out of this color scheme is for those lighter colors to speak to me. No matter how accurately I match the dark clay to the dark dots on the paper, if the lightened versions don’t look enough like the photographs, I’ll need to adjust the recipes.

Unfortunately, I’m not sold on these. The blue needs to be a touch greener, the green needs to be a lot yellower, and the pink is just a tiny bit too purple. I tried again.

The samples on the right are the original recipes, and those on the left are new. I added some Granny Smith to the blue recipe, some Yellow to the green recipe, and some Red to the pink recipe. I think I am happy with the lighter versions of these colors and am ready to move on to the next step. Notice that the darker versions of the new colors don’t really match the big dots. That’s ok. They don’t have to, as long as their lighter counterparts are acceptable.

Next step: Compare our color choices to the mosaic as a whole and decide if we need any further tweaking.

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If you recall, last time we used three online color palette generators to help us pull the dominant colors out of our mosaic. Now our job is to pick our favorite choices from those palettes, narrow them down to three main hues, and determine our final colors.
I pulled all three palettes into Paint Shop Pro and chose four of my favorite blues, greens, and pinks to help me narrow it down. Looking at these choices helps me to see what hues will look the most appealing together.

And there is one more option… I can use the color picker in Paint Shop Pro to just grab my favorite colors directly off of the mosaic. As it turns out, this is a good thing, because none of the pinks that the palette generators spit out were the “right” ones. I Sometimes you just have to go with your gut. The image above represents the three colors that appeal to me the most together, and I got them directly from the pictured photos. Despite the fact that we didn’t ultimately go with any of the hues from the palette generators, I don’t consider that a wasted step. Under different circumstances, where I didn’t already have a particular vision of what I wanted before I started, it would have yielded perfectly acceptable results.

So, this is the color scheme I want, but we can’t stop here.

Look carefully at the image above. These tiles represent the Blue color scheme. The tile with the stripes shows the three main colors (plus white) of this scheme. See how dark they are? Nearly all of the canes in this color scheme are much lighter than those stripes. That’s because most of the cane designs don’t use the base colors as-is, but rather mix them in varying proportions to white. If we choose our favorite pink, aqua, and lime colors and use them as-is, the resulting canes will actually be much paler than what we were hoping for. We need to start with darker versions of our favorite colors.

Since I generated these colors in Paint Shop Pro in the first place, I just used PSP to darken them uniformly. These are our base hues for our new color scheme.

Are you getting excited to see these colors translated into clay? You’re in luck - that’s our next step. Start coming up with ideas for how to name this color scheme while you’re waiting. There’s a contest a brewin’!

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We’re creating a new color scheme together, and our first step was to make a mosaic of photos that included colors we might want to use. Our task now, is to use that mosaic to generate a color palette, from which we can choose our three main colors. A simple Google search for “palette generator” yields an impressive number of results. I chose three free tools to try.

First was from Big Huge Labs and the results are pictured above. I see some attractive blues and greens in this palette, but the pinks don’t do it for me. I want something much pinker.

This swatch is from DeGraeve.com’s Color Palette Generator and I’m even less happy with these pinks, although the aqua in the vibrant column is a really nice one.

Now, this one, generated by Jeff Minard’s Color Palette Generator is much closer to what I want pink-wise. And I think perhaps I can find an appropriate blue and green here as well. Additionally, there’s nothing stopping me from choosing colors from all three palettes and using them together.

Next step? Making the final color choices.

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I’m creating a new color scheme, and I’m taking you with me. Interested? Here’s the scoop: Normally when I plan a new color scheme, there is very little actual planning involved. I have a vague idea of at least one hue that I want to use, and the rest comes about while standing in the clay aisle of Michael’s, comparing little packages to each other. I thought it might be fun to go a little deeper this time.

Plus, I’m going to let one of you name the color scheme and win a little prize when we’re done. Sound like fun? Ok, here we go!

I have a few self-imposed rules that I follow when making up color schemes:

• There must be three distinct hues.
• They must be vibrant, because over the course of canemaking, they will be lightened to varying degrees.
• They must look nice together (of course!)
• There must be one additional “lightening” color, usually white, but sometimes tan, gray, yellow, or cream.

So, let’s start considering colors, shall we? I know that I want to use some form of aqua and olive, along with a bright pink to complement those greens. I’ve spent enough time favoriting things in flickr over the last few months to know that I am very drawn to these colors right now. But how do I choose exactly what forms of these colors I want?

I am beginning by looking through my favorite photos and choosing the ones that are pleasing to me in that colorway. I used the free mosaic utility from Big Huge Labs to make the image you see at the top of this post. The feeling I get when I look at these pictures is the same feeling I want to get with my new color scheme.

The next step? Translate this mosaic into a palette of colors from which we can choose our three main hues. Stay tuned!

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I thought it was supposed to be 90 degrees and sunny today. I dressed for it. Instead it’s 70 degrees and raining. And I’m desperate for chocolate. I need a bag of Kissables. Need it. I remember shopping on rainy days as a teenager, thinking my mom was weird for driving around the parking lot in search of a better space just to avoid getting too wet on the way in. “What’s the big deal? It’s just a little rain,” I would say. And now, 20 years later, here I sit, avoiding a trip to the supermarket because it’s drizzling. It’s not even pouring. I could understand being grounded by an all-out thunderstorm, but this? This is the kind of rain I used to go out in on purpose. Either I’m using the rain as an excuse for my laziness, or I really am as much like my mother as they say I am…

With rain comes mud, and with mud comes this interesting post I found on the Creative Catalyst Productions blog. Oil painter Caroline Jasper believes that color mixing should be avoided. The idea is that the most vibrant colors you can get are straight from the tube (or package, in the case of polymer clay). Every bit of foreign color you add to the base “muddies” it up somewhat. So, instead of mixing blue and yellow to make green, use the pure blue and the pure yellow in close proximity to each other. Your eye will still see the green, but the vibrancy of the blue and the yellow will not be lost.

I have never seen this idea put into words before, although I have observed it in action. This Swamp color scheme consists of light blue, olive green, and dark brown, yet my eye often combines the green and blue so that I feel like I am looking at aqua. When I think about this color family, I very often envision it as brown and aqua. I actually use straight-from-the-package colors as often as possible in my work. There’s an obvious benefit to that approach - I don’t have to mix a new batch of “Custom Color A” every time I want to make a new cane in that scheme. But what makes a shortcut like that acceptable is the fact that the three base colors are rarely visible by themselves. I rely on those colors mingling with white and with each other in such a way that your eye sees more than three basic hues. And unless you are intimately familiar with the Sculpey III color chart, it’s not likely you would recognize the Candy color scheme as being Dusty Rose, Sweet Potato and Granny Smith-based, anyway.

Another mud-related concept I read about recently had to do with value and saturation contrast. Maggie Maggio is posting a fascinating series of articles on color-blindness. In discussing the task of designing street maps for those who cannot discern the difference between certain colors, the point is made that the contrast between hues is not nearly as important as the contrast between values. A color-blind person may not be able to tell the difference between light pink and light green, but he will be able to tell that light pink and dark green are distinct. This is a concept that does not only apply to the color-blind. The more value contrast in a cane design, for example, the less muddy the reduced result is and the more definition it has. This makes for a more appealing pattern.

I’ve seen this in action with the ubiquitous Retro Cane. This is one of those designs that is so busy when reduced to a small size that you run the risk of losing the pattern entirely if your colors are all of the same brightness. My rule of thumb is to start with three dark colors and one light color (usually white). I create three medium colors by adding the light to the darks in equal portions. As I load the extruder, I alternate dark, medium, and light so that the concentric circles will emerge in a pattern with some contrast to it. This approach nearly always produces an appealing design. If you look at the image, you can see that the tiles with the least definition are the ones where I used a light color other than white. In particular, the Tweed tile and the Vineyard tile are not as eye-popping because they were lightened with tan and gray, respectively.

I’ve been thinking a lot about color lately. Must be that approaching Color Challenge deadline doing it to me…

I think it’s time I put on some shoes and get myself that chocolate I wanted. If I wait too much longer, I’ll spoil my appetite for the gourmet supper I’ll be preparing tonight.

Gourmet supper. I slay me.

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Please forgive the less-than-stellar photography on these - I plan to spend some time making them look pretty in pictures after I’ve drilled the holes and strung them on cords.  I don’t know how long that will take and I didn’t want to wait to post these!

So this first image is of the pendant we were taught to make by Donna Kato this weekend.  The class covered construction of the box, embellishment of the decorative layer with image transfers, inks, rubber stamps & gold leaf, and attaching the end caps.  I’m very happy with the way this turned out.

The process involves multiple bakings, so while my inro baked at each step, I worked on a second one.  I was interested to see how the technique worked using my canes for the decorative layer.  I’m happy with it, but I don’t like it as much as the version I made “to spec.”

After the inros were complete, I decided to see if I could make one of my usual pendant styles incorporating an image transfer into the mix.

And then I did it again.  I think the idea has potential.  I have visions of my new key chain dancing in my head - every year I make myself a keychain with one son on each side.  I’ve been carrying the same one for over a year now, and I’m ready for a change.  I’m excited to think I could make a non-flat key chain and still use images of the boys on it…

As expected, my mind is full of things I want to try.  I knew I should have taken next week off so that I could indulge my muse.  I hope I don’t go out of my mind while I attempt to ignore my creative impulses and be a responsible adult this week

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Having a great time. Wish you were here. Today we learned to construct Japanese inro pendants, and to decorate them with image transfers, stamps, pigment inks and the ever-important gold leaf. This is my pendant in-progress. It still needs the domed top to be added, and it could use some sanding/buffing. I’m impressed with how this is coming along, given my lack of experience with these techniques.

I worked on a second box using my canes from the Country color scheme during the times when the main box was baking. This, too, is a work in progress, but I don’t think it’s as impressive as the first inro.

I bought one of Donna’s pendants - I love it! It’s got my favorite green in the world, and it’s got polka dots. What more can a girl ask for? (My son the ham, must get into every picture and make a weird face.)

This class has been great - I love the pace, and I love how, with Donna’s instructions, I can do something completely new to me and it will feel like second nature - as if I’ve been doing it forever.

After-class, the family and I walked next door from our hotel to Chili’s for supper.  The rest of the evening involved, drinking tea & hot chocolate with the boys in the hotel lobby while Neil got a little break, and all four of us playing a rousing game of Rummikub before tucking in the boys and kissing their sweet little faces goodnight.

If this is a post card, I must be writing really tiny…

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Note to self: When taking a picture of things on the coffee table, consider washing the fingerprints and sticky spots off of the glass first…

I’m always happy to see some of my older work find a home. I just packed up these six Long Heart Pendants today and will be sending them away with the next mail pickup. I made them at least three years ago. They started out as large balls of clay, which I covered with two square cane slices, in such a way that no background was visible. I rolled the balls to smooth the cane edges and then finessed it into a heart shape. At the time that I made these, most of my work was done that way - make a ball, cover with canes, press into shape, poke holes, bake.

I work very differently these days. Now the majority of my designs, like these buttons, start out as flat sheets. My process is more along the lines of make sheet, add thin cane veneer, cut out shape, bake, outline, add thin protective layer of liquid clay, rebake, drill holes. It’s more complicated than before, but I like the results better. I used to resist the idea of multiple bakings, but now I embrace it.

Where did the shift happen? I remember it clearly. In August of 2005 I took a cuff bracelet/tile bracelet class with Donna Kato. This was the first time I had seen her in person, but before that I had become infinitely familiar with her book, videos, and as many Carol Duvall appearances as I could get my mother to tape for me (I didn’t have cable tv then, and I still don’t). I don’t know how to explain it exactly, but something happens when I see Donna demo a new technique. Something always “clicks” with me, and it is nearly always something unexpected.

A good example of this is Donna’s gorgeous flower petal caning technique. I saw that and thought, “that would be a good way to simulate the look of raffia,” and proceeded to develop a cane that was meant to look like three colors of raffia ribbons woven together.

I also came up with a cane that looks like a chenille sweater to me, and it started with Donna’s spiral cane.

Just two examples of many.

So, this tile/cuff bracelet class was spent making (you guessed it) tile bracelets and cuff bracelets. I enjoyed making them, but I can’t say I was overly excited by my results. What I was excited by was the idea I had for barrettes and pendant necklaces using some of the techniques we’d employed in the bracelet-making. The layering of veneers over base sheets, the forming of the base over a removable metal armature, the multiple-bakings for easier handling, the outlining of the bracelets in solid-color clay… all of these things just screamed barrette to me. And for about 3 months after that class, barrettes were all I did In fact, I was reluctant to cut my hair short because I was having so much fun making and wearing barrettes.

I bring this up today because I am gearing up for a trip to Philadelphia this weekend to learn Donna’s technique for Japanese Inro Pendants. If you haven’t seen her take on these, you must. They’re exquisite. I have always wanted to know how to make these boxes, but what excites me the most about this is wondering what the a-ha moment will be. The inro I make in this class may be the only one I ever do, but I fully expect to see Donna do something, perhaps something only tangentially related to the class, that will make me sit up and say, “hey! that would be a great way to accomplish such-and-such a thing!”

When I say “Donna Kato keeps making me do things” I mean it. So often when she demos a new technique, I am driven to use it, but not before I have transformed it into something completely different in my mind. And that’s the beauty of it. The kind of inspiration that acts as a seed to your own creativity is the best inspiration of all. It insures that your finished result is wholly and truly your own and cannot be mistaken for the work of anyone else. I’m excited to see where this weekend leads me!

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Mmmmmm. Colors. The image above is of tiles I made to show the different cane designs I’ve made in my Swamp color scheme. This particular combination of colors came to me as I was driving through the Great Swamp in late spring a few years ago - the sky, the bark on the trees, and lush plantlife, really grabbed me and stuck in my mind long enough for me to translate them to clay when I got home. For me, color is an intuitive thing. I just have this “feeling” that tells me when two hues belong together. And I find it relatively easy to mix particular colors in clay. I can compare a block of Mint Green Sculpey III to a piece of aqua fabric and know that some Granny Smith and a small amount of Teal would create the color I want. Don’t ask me how I know. I just do. And I would be at a loss to describe the process of choosing which colors I will put together for a new scheme. Sometimes I’m inspired by something I’ve seen (nature, fabric, a fractal screen saver), but most of the time, I’m standing in the clay aisle at Michael’s, holding blocks of clay in my hands and seeing what looks nice together. And from what I am told, I generally choose well.

This feels like second nature to me. Can’t everybody do this? Apparently not. If you struggle with color, or if you are good with color but interested in knowing some of the science behind it, or if you are simply a color junkie who wants to indulge in some eye candy, here are some links & ideas to get you started.

• Smashing Color, the blog by polymer clay artist and color expert Maggie Maggio. Her site is bursting with fascinating tutorials and interesting information.
• Lindly Talks Color, a new blog by another clay artist and color expert, Lindly Haunani. In the recipes section, you will find a color recipe for making Kaffir lime leaves, and then an actual recipe for soup you can make with the limes. That’s kind of nifty.
• Margie Deeb’s Color Celebration, which is a new one on me as of this morning. I haven’t explored much of her site yet, but I did listen to her most recent podcast while scrubbing my sink. It (the podcast, not my sink) talked about the power of monochromatic color schemes and how to get the most out of them.
• Polka Dot Creations Color Challenge, which features a new color every month and aims to unite very different works of art & craft by color (but you should already know that, right?)
• A Year of Color, which is a flickr group currently in its second incarnation. The concept initially was to feature a specific color each week. This time around, the focus is on color pairings. It’s really quite interesting, and while it’s not specifically related to craft, it does give you some practice recognizing and seeking out pleasing color combinations.
• Color Mixing, another flickr group, which is run by polymer clay artist Iris Mishly. The group focuses on color recipes in various media. Be sure to read the First Post on Color Mixing for Iris’ suggested links.

How about you? Do you have any favorite sites for the color-curious? Be sure to leave them in the comments so everyone can have a look!

Lisa

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I have a love-hate relationship with image transfers. I love incorporating family photos into my claywork, but I hate the process of transferring. Mainly, the problem is that I have tried so many different methods, and so much time goes by between tries, that I can never remember what worked. I go through plenty of trial-and-error for each piece that way and it can be aggravating. But the results… the results make the aggravation less onerous to a point.

The method that works the most for me these days has got to be the old t-shirt transfer paper method. If you’re struggling with other methods, then I would suggest giving it a try. Transfer method seems to be as individual a choice as clay brand is, and what works for one person may not work for others. You need to play around until you find your success. And then, unlike me, try to remember what you did that worked

A few years ago, I collected wedding pictures of all of the parents, grandparents & siblings in our family. For unmarried adults I took college/high school graduation shots, and for children I used christening images. I wanted them all to be of a formal variety, and timeless. I converted everything to black & white, and now I use them in various crafty ways, including the family tree magnets pictured here, another set of family tree magnets I made for my brother-in-law and new sister-in-law when they got married, and a wedding bracelet that I wore to my cousin’s wedding. I also took some less formal current photos and used them in another set of magnets I gave the boys to play with a few years ago. It was a great idea at the time because it helped them learn the faces and names of relatives we didn’t see on a regular basis.

I love having all of these old photos available digitally, and the ability to transfer them to a hard, durable medium like polymer clay is a great bonus. They make great pendants, pins, tile bracelets, and I’d imagine you could even put your grandmother’s face on a button and sew it to your baby’s handmade sweater! (Wish I’d thought of that when I had babies around…) Keychains are good too. I’ve got a double-sided key chain with Son #1 on one side and Son #2 on the other. As you can see, the possibilities are endless, and it’s a lot of fun to carry your photos around with you in an unusual and artistic way.

I added some of my clayworks and other crafty things from the last few years to flickr today. Have a look, if you’re interested!

Lisa

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I don’t usually encourage unsolicited email trying to sell me things, but these just made me go oooooooooh, when I saw them. I’m a sucker for polymer clay and silver together, and I’ve always wanted to learn to make my own bezels. Since 11+ years into this obsession I have yet to get around to that, maybe Creatable Linkables will be something worth trying? They look so pretty in the picture. I can almost envision my own coordinated cane designs going in each link.

If any of you try these, let me know how they worked for you!

Lisa

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One of the things that I got out of this past weekend’s Arabesque Caning workshop was an opportunity to learn a method of cane-reduction that I hadn’t employed before. My canes are normally 6-8 ounces and I can get away with a pressing/turning/stroking routine to reduce them. This weekend I reduced a cane more than twice that size and used a “slamming” method to do so. I was impressed with how well it worked, and now I don’t think I will shy away from larger canes so much.

This link takes you to a movie that shows Kathi Gose slamming a really big cane. What’s funny is that Kathi reads this blog, but I didn’t get the link from her - Robin Milne sent it to me (thanks, Robin! and hi, Kathi!)

Lisa

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Sculpey III: the polymer clay serious artists love to hate. When a newbie comes on the scene, the advice from the veterans is always the same: “Get rid of all of that Sculpey you bought before you knew any better and get yourself some real clay, like Fimo, Premo, or Kato.”

I learned to clay 11+ years ago, and like most new to the craft, I started with several bars of Sculpey III. I loved it. Unfortunately, a lot of what I made became useless when the fragile parts started to snap off. Frustrated, I tried other brands. I switched to Fimo but swore off of it after completing 4 nativity scenes one Christmas season while I was still using a plastic roller and an x-acto knife as my only tools. That was an exercise in complete frustration. I flirted briefly with Promat but found it, too, was harder than I liked. When Premo came out, I fell in love with it - it was soft enough not to be frustrating, but strong enough not to break when I looked at it sideways.So, for a few years I was a Premo girl. These were also the years where I did the most experimenting. Eventually, I found my niche in caning. I was particularly enamored with repeating patterns and I liked tiling cane slices together to make sheets that would be useful as veneers. But there was a problem - the Premo canes I made didn’t age particularly well. Every slice I wanted to use had to be warmed up in my hands (which don’t really have much of their own warmth to spare) and even after warming, it didn’t meld well with the other cane slices next to it, nor did it stretch well when run through the pasta machine. I couldn’t use my Premo canes in my applications once they had been sitting around for a while, and that wasn’t going to work for me.

So, I went back to my roots and started caning with Sculpey III. I needed a lighter touch when reducing the canes, but that wasn’t a problem for me. And I needed to take into account the fact that Sculpey is not known for its strength after curing. I could use it for caning, but not as a structural element. I adapted all of my designs so that the primary items were constructed with Premo, and a very thin veneer of one of my Sculpey canes was applied. In most designs, I also added another layer of protection by coating the design with Liquid Kato Polyclay. Sandwiched in between two very strong clays, the ultra thin layer of Sculpey has not posed a structural problem in the least.

It seems that most people serious about polymer clay, particularly those who do caning, prefer the stiffer clays. Newbies are warned off of Sculpey as “too soft for caning.” Well, I’m here to tell you that it is certainly possible to make appealing cane designs in a soft clay. If you don’t have super hot hands, if you can reduce with a light touch, and you use a strong clay for the structural elements of your design, then Sculpey III is a perfectly legitimate option. I have made hundreds of Sculpey canes, mostly in repeating patterns. Many of my canes are several years old, and when I slice them they are still as fresh and as supple as the day I made them. They stretch beautifully in the pasta machine and they meld seamlessly with the slices next to them when forming a clay “fabric.”

This weekend I learned Jana Roberts Benzon’s Arabesque Caning technique. I brought a stiff clay to class as instructed, but I was curious if Sculpey could be used for such an intricate design. Since I have a tendency to work quickly in a workshop setting, I brought some Sculpey to try out the technique during any downtime I had. At the end of class, in addition to the cane we were supposed to be making, I also had an approximately 4-inch tall triangular cane made of Sculpey.

I wasn’ t overly surprised that Sculpey was acceptable for all of the components of the cane, but I do have to admit to a small doubt about its ability to withstand the reduction process. I generally make canes that are only about 6-8 ounces. This was much bigger than that and I was afraid I’d turn it into mush. I was unable to attend the Philadelphia guild meeting today where Jana was going to go through the reduction process, but armed with her written instructions this morning, I plopped down on the floor in my pajamas with my cane and went to town. Well, wouldn’t you know, the cane reduced beautifully, with minimal waste, and all of the crisp detail intact.

This, my friends, is a very complex, very detailed precision cane made entirely out of Sculpey III:

And just for kicks, here are some items that I made from that cane this afternoon:

All of these items encase the paper-thin Sculpey cane slices in a sandwich with a thick slice of Premo and a layer of liquid Kato clay so they won’t break easily.

I’ll be the first to admit that caning with Sculpey isn’t for everyone, but I do think that it deserves a far better reputation than it gets. I’m looking forward to playing around with Jana’s technique and encorporating ideas from it into my own work. I see a Paisley cane in my future…

Lisa

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Originally published at Polka Dot Creations. Please leave any comments there.