Translucent Vertical Tubes

A while ago, I made a sort of rock-look cane based on the lace cane concept.  I used lightly tinted translucent clay rolled into a bull's eye cane and wrapped in white. Then I reduced the cane, cut it into pieces, and joined them together in a large matrix cane.  At that time, I used slices from the cane to cover cabochon shapes and make irregular beads that looked like unusual stones.  The photo on the left shows some of the polymer pebbles I made.  For more information, take a look at my post of Tuesday, December 24, 2013 - Honeycombed Pebbles.

The other day, I was looking at a piece of this type of cane I had left and wondering what to do with it.  Since I've been playing with tube beads, I decided to make some tube beads using the cane.  I left the outer edges uneven as they were on the cane itself, and overlapped the rolled edges rather than cutting them to meet evenly.  Leaving the translucent tubes hollow makes them look like they glow from inside.  I found some peach freshwater pearls and some iridescent glass O beads, and set to work stringing the tube beads vertically.  Here is the resulting necklace.  It has a really soft look to it, and the rounded ends of each of the tube beads helps keep them gentle on the skin.

It's fun to visit "old" canes and do do something new with them!