Soft, Sweet Transluscents

I love the effect of translucent polymer.  This clay imparts a softness - almost a cloudy aspect to the pieces. It's not easy to see on the screen, but in person there is a luminescence in translucent pieces that is simply lovely.

One of the canes I enjoy making with translucent is the chrysanthemum or "chrissy" cane. I most frequently make this with a Skinner blended translucent layer and a solid white, thinner layer of clay.  These layers are rolled up jelly-roll style with indentations made by a credit card or similar item, and voila! Your cane is ready for use!

The pieces in this post were made with translucent solids and a few different translucent and white chrissy canes.  The bracelets above and the earrings on the right were all made from chrissy canes that shaded from yellow to green to purple to fuschia.  As you can see, mixing these colors with translucent softens the hue.

The earrings on the left were made with another color combination.

These 2 bracelets below were made from very different color pallets.  The upper cuff has dusty purples and light rose colors while the lower cuff is oriented a bit more toward fall:  copper, greens and rust.

Translucent polymer has myriad applications in layered applications, too. If you haven't explored this particular clay, you have a treat in store.

Here are two more pairs of earrings in different styles. Pendants coming soon! Stay tuned.

A "Spidery Mum" Cane

In my June post, you may have noticed the cane I made that Ron Lohocky used on some of his wonderful heart pins.  I've been on a bit of roll making more of these canes - and figuring out what to do with them. I call this cane a "spider mum" cane because it looks to me like the long thin petals on a spider chrysanthemum.  These are a variation of the wedge cane that I like to make and use in many of my flowers. This particular variation is based on one Marie-france Tournat posted on her blog, Polymeramoi.  By the way, hers is an excellent blog and definitely worth a visit.

 Back to the spider mums....I started experimenting with different pieces, and have some here to share.  You did see some flower shapes from these canes on the Brass Bracelet Forms piece I posted a couple of weeks ago.  Here, I made some flat brass channel cuffs and some earrings using the canes.

The mobius shape on these earrings is one I've used before and I really like. This time, I flattened 2 sides so the pieces are not completely symmetrical.

 I also had to try the ruffled flowers as earrings.  The red and blue pairs are petals within petals.  I just used 2 layers, but you could certainly add more.  The centers are small silver balls and pearls. 

The other two cream and colored pairs are posts and have two petals attached to each other vertically.  There really is no limit to what you can do with polymer and polymer canes. Let your imagination run free - and experiment!