My next project cane - paw prints...

Hi Everyone,

I've decided on a pattern for my next cane for my project. It's going to be paw prints. Here's what I'm using as my template which I created using scavenged clip art and Microsoft Powerpoint. I'm not sure on the background colour yet, but the paws will be a skinner blend dark green to either white or tan and then wrapped with a dark blue and white combination to give it some punch. I may make the background tan or I may make it blue.

Not sure how long this will take, it's basically a jelly roll skinner blend shaped into paw prints. The hard part will be the surrounding clay - I hate packing clay around irregular shapes.

Might be a few weeks before I get it done, but it's nice to have the design figured out.

Cheers,

Sandy

Canada goose cane...

Hello Everyone,

I've got my first project canes completed. If you look at the previous post you'll see the stained glass pattern that I used to complete the Canada goose cane.

I took some of the remainder of the clay and did a Judy Belcher tesselated cane series. Now I have five canes that will work together. The tesselated canes are not at all intuitive. I literally have to carry my stuff over to the TV and follow along with Judy's video. Perhaps by the third or fourth attempt I'll finally understand it on my own. Judy's video is amazing.

I'm OK with the goose, not thrilled, but not upset - it came out about what I expected though in hindsight I probably should have used a more brilliant blue but we'll see what the overall effect is once I get the rest of the canes made.

I'm now going to look for a nice bear pattern either in stained glass or in the intarsia patterns. That'll be my next project.

Cheers,

Sandy

My New Year's project

Hi Everyone,

I thought I'd start the new year actually planning a project. I've been madly in love with Jon Anderson's Fimo Creations/ ever since I saw his work in San Diego. So I'd like to try doing something similar. I love his colour schemes and the intricacy in his work.



I don't think I want to do an animal shape, so I've decided to cover a Werther's Christmas tin instead.










I'm now looking for inspiration for canes. I know for sure that I'm going to use the Tesselated Canes from Judy Belcher.


I also know that I want to incorporate Mike Buesseler style landscape canes/ into the work.















I think I'll also use some of my stained glass patterns to generate canes. Here's the first one that I want to try.



I think for now I need to start with a big whack of conditioned clay in the colours that I want. That should be interesting.

I'll post updates along the way but I expect this to be a six month project. I'm hoping to generate 20-30 canes.

My Tessellated Canes!

Hi Everyone,

I finally received some Christmas presents that I was waiting for and one of my presents was Judy Belcher's Millefiori Story DVD. I'd been looking forward to this DVD for a long time and was particularly excited about the Tessellated Canes.

My mother happened to be visiting this weekend and she's tempted to get into clay so we thought we'd try the Tessellated Cane. We decided on a simple colour scheme - Mom really likes red and we thought the black would make the red pop.

I do have to say, I was really and completely unimpressed with the pre-tessellated cane that we started with. I don't tend to use black in my pallette very much at all (everyone asks me if I've been sick if I try to wear it too close to my face) so I thought for sure that we had wasted a lot of clay doing this.

However - once we started tessellating - magic happened! Here are the four tessellations from the ugly mess above. I'll be covering a tin with the canes (what else is new?) and making a luggage tag for Mom with them once I get some more inspiration.

They remind me a bit of playing cards. I think I'll try to make some earrings with them once I reduce the size and then I might not mind the black so much.

As far as Judy's DVD goes - even with the beginning cane stuff I learned a couple of techniques that I hadn't heard of though where she really grabbed my interest was with the tessellated and quilting canes. I won't share the simple tips with you to encourage you to buy the DVD but the one obvious one that I hadn't been doing is cutting and baking a slice of each cane that I make and saving it. Judy shows hers in a clear glass bowl - I think I'm going to have to start doing that.

Next up - my New Year's hugely involved clay project.

Cheers,

Sandy