Bounette's flower canes - week 18 of canes

Hi Everyone,

I'm still working on a couple of tutorials for canes that I'll be posting on this blog later (or perhaps I will submit to Polymer Cafe).  In the mean time, I thought I'd show you some canes that really caught my eye.  They're from Bounette, in France.  I love these and might have to re-think my aversion to making flower canes though I suspect that just getting the cane all the same shape all the way through might be a challenge for me. 

If you're ever wondering what to do with kaleidoscope remnants, the flowers might be the things to try.

Bounette is a beautiful caner - I love her work.  If you're one of those that have tried to make a butterfly cane and then don't know what to do with it, check out her work here. 

I'm also particularly fond of her colour scheme in the flowers here. 

She doesn't always do flowers.  A cute little house cane is here.

Her blog is in French but if you view it with Google translator it comes out OK with a bit of whimsy that isn't in the original version.  It seems to want to call canes ducks in English. 

Cheers,

Sandy

Happy Birthday to my husband!

Hi Everyone,

Today is my husband's birthday.  The only thing he really wants is a decorated birthday cake.  Unfortunately I'm not very efficient at decorating the cake so every year I have to take the day off.  This is this year's effort.  Last year's effort is here.   I'm pretty happy with it, despite a bit of lopsidedness, and my husband's response when he saw it was "Cool!" so I consider it a success.

I was originally inspired to make a Lego cake by the wedding cake that I saw here.  But I knew that those skills were way outside of my realm and patience level.  So, googling Lego birthday cakes brought me to a neat compilation of Lego birthday cakes here. 

While fondant would have made for a nice looking cake I wanted to stick with buttercream icing since my husband doesn't like fondant.  I was adamant, though, that I wanted the cake to be smooth in appearance.  I am normally icing skill challenged but by googling smooth buttercream icing I came across the paper towel method of smoothing.  It's brilliant!!! It calls for a crust forming buttercream icing.  Another google search and the buttercream recipe here which is my new favourite buttercream recipe though I reversed the almond and vanilla flavouring ratios.

I had help on this one. My friend, Janice, has been joining me on my cake decorating day for several years. Normally she just keeps me company but this year I recruited her to help with the round peg bits which are oreo type cookies that have been iced. She did a great job, as is usual for her. My focus was on trying to get the butter cream icing smooth.

Overall I think I spent about six hours making the icing and decorating the cake.  The colours took a long time to mix since I started off stingy with the concentrated paste.  I have the hardest time with getting the edges and the top seams to meet in icing.  They keep wanting to lift off of the cake which is very frustrating to me.  If anyone has tips for preventing that, I'd love to hear them.  Smoothing was another chunk of time.  Cleaning the granite counter also was a fair bit of time since I had powdered sugar everywhere!

We're off to dinner shortly.  It's Baton Rouge for our favourite ribs.  Then back home for cake and Baskin Robbins pralines and cream ice cream (no one else does pralines and cream quite like they do). 

It's a good day to celebrate.

Cheers,

Sandy

Pretty pink presents for Patti

Hi Everyone,

Another good Morrisburg friend of mine, Gaby, did a wonderful class on surface techniques at Morrisburg this year.  While I had packed everything other than the kitchen sink I was woefully unprepared for Gaby's class, particularly since I had a pre-set goal in mind.  It seemed like for most of the techniques I didn't have some of the tools, particularly the acrylic paints.  However, I fell in love with using Future and Pearlex and the crackle effect.  My goal was to use Gaby's class to make some earrings.

My friend, Talar, had tasked me with making her a pair of pretty pink earrings.  I came up with these and then started to wonder if they were too bright.  I called Talar, and sure enough, she wanted something more pastel.  Oops!

My wonderful Morrisburg roommate, Patti, is in love with pink, so much so that her home was featured in Colin and Justin's Home Heist show on HGTV with the title "Not So Pretty in Pink" which you can see here.  While her home may no longer be overly pink, she still is infatuated with pink and gladly wears anything in that colour.  She was sitting across from me and when I asked her if she would like them she immediately said "yes!"  She wasn't in the least offended that they weren't originally made for her and when I had been calling Talar had been secretly hoping that Talar wouldn't like them.

I was happy to give them to Patti.  They're very much outside of my usual colour scheme.  They're certainly not perfect - if you look closely you can see that the centre spiral pattern goes up in one earring and down in another, but they would actually be something that I would wear. 

I'm glad that Patti likes them.

Cheers,

Sandy

Morrisburg Face Canes - week 17 of canes

Hi Everyone,

My good friend, Louise, taught face canes this year at Morrisburg and did a terrific job. She started off with the eyes and several possible variations, let us play, then moved to the nose and cheeks, let us play, then to the mouth, let us play, and then showed us how to pack. The format was perfect and as part of the lesson she asked that we do a face cane swap. More than half the class participated, which is unheard of for canes at Morrisburg. A lot of that was due to Louise's excellent teaching style. She ran out of time to show hair which is why there are several bald faces in the group, but one of the great things about not having hair on the canes is that you can customize the canes more that way.

Louise encouraged us to experiment and you can see that the experimentation was rampant with everyone's cane full of character and charm.

My cane is the second from the left on the bottom row. I did put hair on my cane simply because I had one of the simpler canes in the mix.

Kudos to Louise! It was her first time teaching and we sincerely hope not her last.

If you're interested in other face cane information, Louise put together an incredibly thorough listing of all things face canes with what looks like about 100 links here.

I will write more about Morrisburg in the next few entries. Happy exhaustion and warm friendship is the best way to describe the experience.

Cheers,

Sandy

An Oh My God Bouquet for Talar

A friend of mine, Talar, is coming up on an early anniversary of an event that has caused her considerable pain.  The details are her story to tell so I won’t go further on that aspect. However, it was important to me to recognize the event and perhaps to offer her a moment of brightness. We tend to celebrate happy anniversaries but sometimes the sad anniversaries are either forgotten or not commemorated by others.

Talar is a generous friend who gives freely of herself and asks for very little in return (though you'd better be prepared to be pestered to participate in the activities she’s always organizing which is sometimes a wee little difficult for a non-joiner like me).  She is wonderful and in the year that I’ve known her it’s hard not to think of her without a smile.  

Talar loves flowers, girly things, and shows of affection.  Unfortunately, she’s not been the recipient of as many flowers as she would like (what is it with some men?) so flowers tend to be extra special to her. 

As Talar approaches this anniversary I thought it would be nice if some of us at work joined in and gave her some flowers.  I went ahead and called a local florist that someone here highly recommended and asked for an “I want her to feel like Miss America” bouquet.  Then I asked around the office if people would be willing to chip in on the bouquet.  I was unprepared for the overwhelming response and the willingness of these beautiful women that I am so very fortunate to work with. We were able to pool together more than enough money very quickly.

Another phone call to the florist and I upgraded it to an “oh my god” bouquet.  I should note that the florist doesn't actually offer an "oh my god" bouquet, but those were the words I used to describe what I wanted. Twenty minutes later I received even more money and called the florist (at this point I was starting to feel like a stalker) to upgrade even more but was told it was too late, that the bouquet was already on its way.  


The florist thought I would be “pleased” with what he had given me.  Talk about understatement.

The flowers arrived shortly after the phone call, and the first words out of everyone’s mouths, including Talar’s was “oh my god”.  The flowers, Talar’s reaction, and the giddiness of everyone who participated really led to a perfect day though Talar probably wasn’t as focused at work as she could have been.  

If you’re in the Toronto area and are looking for a good florist I can’t speak highly enough of my experience with Joseph Flowers.  The bouquet was very reasonably priced and cost much less than you think it did.  The prompt delivery and the beauty of the bouquet helped make the gift just so perfect.  Many of us smiled all day long and Talar’s face hurt by the end of the day.

Everyone should receive a special bouquet at least once in their life.  I’m pretty sure it’s going to take a lot to top the one Talar received this week. 


Cheers,


Sandy

You know you're a clayer when...

1.  You buy your wine because of the bottle!

We're off to Morrisburg in a few days and wine can sometimes flow freely.  I will be partaking because wine is a simple way of easing my essential tremor and I find it's less distracting to others watching me teach if they're not wondering if I am going to slice myself up or not.

A while back we had people over for dinner and I was thrilled when they brought this bottle of wine with them.  My first thought was that it was perfect for clay!  As an added bonus it's quite a nice white wine.  So this year, as part of my share of the spirits of Morrisburg, I've bought two bottles of Voga Italia wine.  One is the Pinot Grigio, which I know I like, and the other is a blush.  I'm certain that these bottles will be snapped up by one of the clayers.

2.  You guiltily try to figure out how to improve earrings that have been gifted to you.

My friend, Talar, recently went to Guyana for work for a few days.  I asked her to bring me back some earrings and she agreed.  I was thrilled when I opened the box, they're silver outlines of a marquise shape (I had to look up what you call a pointy-on-both-ends oval) and in each earring there are two of these shapes, one nesting inside the other.  They're very neutral, I can wear them with anything, they jingle a bit when I shake my head and I love them, really, truly, I do!

But....

That inner shape that's got nothing inside it is just calling out for a bit of clay.  Part of me is devastated that I want to improve on something that was purchased for me with the spirit of buying me something special.  Another part of me says that Talar knew I was a clayer and that I view the world from claying eyes and that this is a risk when you deal with clayers.   Talar is used to me saying "wow, that would be perfect for...".  If it were anyone other than Talar I wouldn't even be thinking about this option.

So I'm wrestling with myself on this.  I have spent several happy minutes or hours trying to figure out what would be best inside that little shape.  I do want it to be neutral and I don't really have any earrings with white in them that I absolutely love, so I'm leaning towards that.  Or maybe silver.  I'd like to use the dichroic papers that I still haven't used up as well but that would veto the white since the dichro isn't very interesting on the white.

I've already asked Talar if it would be OK if I modified them.  Of course, she has said yes because what else do you say when someone says that the most perfect thing you've given can be made better (not the words that I used but that's how I feel it came across).  She's also indicated that if she likes what I've done she'll get her similar style ones done by me.

I'll let you know what I end up doing.  It would be intersting to hear if others have similar experiences.

Cheers,

Sandy

My 2010 goal - week 16 of canes

Hi Everyone,

I've been doing a lot of caning, which I happen to love. Ultimately in the next few months I want to cover a bottle. Here's one I did a few years ago which sits in our hutch. The bottle was a water bottle that we unknowingly ordered on a wedding anniversary when we asked for water at a fancy schmancy resaurant. At $11 for the bottle I decided that I was going to get more for the value than just very expensive water. The waiter did look at me like I had three heads when I asked to keep the bottle, but gave in graciously and allowed me to keep it.

I would say that this was my first large caning attempt. It's actually quite pretty and I do like it.

One thing that has happened over the years is that the caning has developped a number of fine cracks as you can see in the photo above. I don't know whether it's because I didn't bake it at a hot enough temperature or whether it's just a feature of ageing clay. It probably took three years for the cracks to show up and I don't look at it often enough to figure out whether they're increasing.

The cracks are fine enough that you wouldn't notice them until they were pointed out. At some point I might be tempted to antique them with a white if the pattern continues to expand. It might give some more interest.

But that's a task for much later.

In the mean time I've been compiling my canes for my next bottle. I have a number of them that I've reduced to about quarter inch high. I've been creating two inch samples of them and baking them. My hope is that when it comes time to organizing the canes I can use these to figure out what is most pleasing to my eye for layout on the bottle. Here's a sample of some of what I've got so far. It'll be interesting to see how the colours go together and I have some ideas for interest.



We'll see.

Cheers,

Sandy

Oh, and by the way, I've added a list of the blog entries relating to the Year of Canes on the left of my blog. It's a quick way of seeing what I've done so far if you're interested.