From One, Many!

One of the things that people often ask me is how I manage to paint all the colors and designs on the clay. They can't believe that for most of my pieces, the various colors and patterns are made from the way in which I manipulate the clay.  Since an "in person" demonstration is not available at the Westerly gallery except on special events, I have made a series of storyboards demonstrating each step of various polymer techniques and processes.  This month, I also made a small display showing a Skinner blend bull's eye cane and a variety of pieces which were all derived from that cane. The pictures in this blog post show the pieces I set up in the display. The cane slice in the middle came from the original cane.  I made a striped cane from this base similar to the cane shown on  my blog post a couple of weeks ago on March 19.  The shapes here were just experiments and "playing around."  You never know when something that is a clay "doodle" might become the base of a new idea.


These mobius earrings were made from slices of that striped cane.  I love the mobius shape, and this particular cane works in that design perfectly.



The drop earrings, and the necklace with the copper chain below, came from another little cane I made by twisting the striped cane around a couple of times.



The next pendant with the gold-filled bail shows a slice from the striped cane as well as a section from what I think of as a plaid or checkered sheet.  This is not actually a cane but is rather made from a log rolled of scrap pieces from your cane work.  This log is twisted several times, then passed through the pasta machine at a thin setting. The result is a striped sheet.  Slices from the striped sheet are cut and laid on a base sheet.  Off-setting the stripes each time you cut and place creates the plaid or checkered sheet. Different ways of laying the sheets down would create different looks.    The last photo on this page shows a pendant and earrings made entirely from sheets made in this plaid sheet method.  It's amazing where a little experimenting can lead.

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!