I love Judy Belcher's Tessellated Cane technique...

Hi Everyone,

I'm still playing with Judy Belcher's tessellated canes. The first of these images are from the clays I used in the chickadee cane without adding the background (you can see the chickadee breast, tail feathers, and leaf cane). These are by far my favourite - I love the colours and how they came out. I'm going to make some earrings with these and try to save the rest for my project. There's not much though - less than an inch of each of these canes. I'll have to slice thinly.





As I was rooting around my clay supplies I came across some scraps from landscape canes that I had done earlier. I did a bit of my scrap clay technique and combined it with Judy's technique and these were the result. The colours are quite pretty. Not sure if they'll go with my project or if I'll use them as earrings or what.


And this last set is the scrap from the scrap of the chickadee cane. The canes are small, only about an inch or so long. They'll go with the project since they've got enough brown in them that they might link the bear claws to the chickadee and other canes.

If you're at all interested in learning the technique, Judy Belcher alludes to it in her book (she uses all of 3 sentences to describe it - good luck with figuring it out from there) and she does a nice video of it on her DVD. It's pretty easy to figure out how to make the central core but it's what she does after that that makes all the difference. You can buy her DVD through a number of different sources. Judy's site is http://judybelcher.blogspot.com/ for those that want more information.

That's it for now,

Sandy

My big-headed chickadee cane

Hi Everyone,

I've spent a few hours working on my chickadee cane. I'm not sure whether I'm happy with it - I had some problems that I'll discuss below. Once again, my inspiration was a stained glass pattern. I've decided that canes are prettiest when they've got skinner blends to I tried to incorporate some into this cane. I started out creating the main framework to the cane - you can see the approximate dimensions in the photo.
Then it was on trying to determine what background would be best. I'm trying to marry the trillium cane and the Canada goose canes that I did earlier so it seemed like I needed some green and blue in the background. But, this time I got smart and sliced off a bit of the chickadee and a bit of my tentative background, baked them separately and then put them onto each other.

I took a tip from Judith Belcher's video and looked through my binoculars in a reverse direction to see how it would look in a smaller scale. Judith uses other equipment than binoculars but the result is the same and I hope I'm not giving away secrets by spelling this out. I also considered a tan background, which also would have looked nice, but this background allowed me to use up some scrap clay. The head looks a little big here but that's only because when I sliced a bit off the chickadee I didn't get much of the head and I had to cut off a sliver more for the head. I didn't realize that this was more prophetic than I expected.
So then it was on to constructing the cane. I do like creating a full background and then cutting out the bits to surround the main cane - it's a bit easier for me to visualize and get the effect that I want, though it does generate some waste clay.

Once I cut everything out I started to reduce it. I was impatient and didn't let it rest before reducing, but the main cane and the background had been constructed previously so it wasn't too bad. HOWEVER, I had incorporated some scrap clay into the black of the chickadee. I knew that it was a bit stiffer than the other clays going into it, but I didn't think it would be as much of a problem as it turned out to be. The black in the chickadee did NOT move very much at all and I ended up generating a whack of scrap clay as the rest of the cane moved around it. At one point I was tempted to cut the cane open and remove the black and put new stuff in it was so bad.

I've never had such a difference in clay in caning before. It was terrible and I got very frustrated. Normally I'm a patient reducer. But, finally I was able to reduce and the results are shown in the photo - the head is bigger than I would like, hence the title of the blog. I now have the two bottom sizes in about six inches of length each. The other is just a slice to show what it looked like mid reduction. I'm kinda thinking that I'll combine the two smaller ones together when I put my project together. We'll see.

And, of course, there are Judy Belcher's/tessellated canes that were made with the cutouts and remainders from the blends. These make me think of Ireland and tartans for some reason or other. I have other tessellated canes that I made from more of the scrap and I'll post those later.

I still have the mystic bear that I want to finish and then I'll have to step back and see about the final design of the project.

And, for those of you following the saga of my night light - I broke it as I was showing Leigh how to put it onto the light gently. All that happened was that I snapped off a piece that I had glued on and it didn't actually break the nightlight portion of it. But, I've obviously got to figure out a better way of attaching the support to the shade.

That's it for now.

Cheers,

Sandy

I deleted a comment today...

Hi Everyone,

Just letting you know that I had to delete a comment today. It showed up shortly after I posted my last posting and it said something along the lines of "please go hear". When you click on the "hear" it takes you to what looks like an official Microsoft site and says that you can get a 30 day free trial. Then things start to happen with all sorts of windows popping up that make you think your computer is about to be clobbered. It would be very easy to have this program install on your computer. My father had it happen to him and someone at work has had it happen as well. It's apparently quite nasty and not easy to remove.

My advice is to hold the cursor over any link that you see in anyone's comments. If it doesn't look like it's going to take you where you think it's going to (i.e., someone else's blog, etsy, or flickr site), don't click on the link.

I've now added some safety features to the comments. Not sure how effective they'll be. I hope no one was hurt by the comment showing up on my blog. I think I removed it within an hour of it being loaded.

Sandy

More Tessellations...

Hi Everyone,

Just a quick posting. I had my claying friends, Janice and Karen, over a couple of weekends ago and we played with Judy Belcher's
tessellated cane technique. None of us were impressed with the start of our canes - they just looked awful as you can see on the right in this photo. Two of us were using Kato clay and one of us used Premo.


But, of course, the final versions looked amazing and we were all thrilled with our canes. Colour choice really dictates the mood of the canes. I really do like this method but you do have to buy the video to figure out how it's done.

Next up, my chickadee cane that I'm working on for my project.

Cheers,

Sandy

Ponsawan Bottles of Hope

Hi Everyone,

Yesterday I dinked around with clay pretty much all day. I started playing with Bottles of Hope fashioned after Ponsawan's design which you can see here. These are a lot of fun to make and can come together pretty quickly. I'm still playing with the technique.

So far I use two different circle cutters for the base. One happens to coincidentally match the diameter of the bottle and then the other one is just slightly wider. I put the smaller circle of clay against the bottle bottom and then the larger circle of clay beneath that. That forms a nice lip to wrap the base canes around. I bake the two bottles separately (one thing you don't see in the photos is that I stamp the top and bottom with the words "love" and "hope").


Once they're baked I fill them with small pre-baked cane circles and then wrap the centre piece with more clay. I fill in the area beneath the lip of the bottle with a bit of clay to give it more support. I'm still working on perfecting the centre piece. One thing I've been worried about is if the air in the bottles will expand and cause the centre piece to bubble out or explode. So I've been putting air holes in the centres. You can see it in the happy face one.

For the small cane circles, if I have enough of the cane I'll reduce it to about 1/8 of an inch or so, bake it, then slice it while it's warm. You can see the bright blue bits in the bottles, those are the letter canes that I did a long time ago that spell out the word "hope".

I have a hard time finishing edges - when I try to make them disappear I often make it look worse by smearing the edges. I now tend to leave them in and let them be part of the quirkiness of the bottle. For bigger projects I tend to be fussier.

Ponsawan is going through an incredibly rough time at the moment. These bottles will be going to cancer patients who are also going through rough times. I hope that Ponsawan can get a small measure of peace knowing that her ideas are helping others even as she needs to focus all her energy on her daughter's recovery.

Regards,

Sandy

If at first you don't succeed... finally nightlight success!

Hi Everyone,

Today is finish up assorted projects in clay day and I finally decided to tackle the nightlight again. Thank you to Susan Turney who suggested I drape it over a form to bake. Scrounged around and all I could come up with was one of our mismatched drinking glasses.

You can view Susan's work here. She does the most amazing vessels and running through her >300 photos is incredibly inspirational - so many other things that I want to try after seeing her site. I'd love to see some of her vessels in person.


There's one wee little crack under one of the clouds, but it's right at an edge that you won't normally see. Leigh, my pregnant friend, has been laughing at my trials. I told her I had to abandon the project for a week or so just so that while I was working on it I wouldn't accidentally be filling it with curses. I figure the little crack can serve as a metaphor for something or other.

Not a lot of plaquing. I didn't antique the words in the clouds - you can only really see them when the light is turned on.

I'm a little concerned at how fragile it appears to be. I can always do another one but at this rate it would have been quicker to make the afghan.

I want to also give credit for the stained glass pattern. I got it out of the book "Northern Lights" by the Artists of Glassmith Studios, 1988 (wow, it's 20 years old).

And that is that for the nightlight. Nice to have it done.

I've been playing with the hourglass Bottles of Hope that I posted about earlier. I'll have three samples up shortly. They're great fun and take me about an hour to do but I haven't got it down to production line yet.

Cheers,

Sandy

More Slovenia Connection...introducing Ursa!

Hi Everyone,

After posting about a clayer in Slovenia, Ursa, a different clayer from Slovenia, came forward and introduced herself. She has a Flickr website here that's full of beautiful clay necklaces, beads, and earrings. I like how she gives a twist to her pendants - the photo on the left looks like it's been treated that way and it makes me want to play with the technique.

I also very much like her colour pallette, particularly the warm reds and her summer colours and she's inspired me to play with translucents more - the finish on her work is wonderful.


I continue to be amazed at both the talent that's out there and even more by how much easier it's getting to find every day. The Internet truly is amazing.

Thank you, Ursa, for introducing yourself. Your work is beautiful and I'm honoured to meet you,

Sandy