craftgrrl | Polymer Clay 'Slice' Beads

I cane a lot. Most of my canes are layering canes where you essentially collage all the design in layers, bake and sand like mad. Some of my canes are what I call 'slice bead' canes. These are the fun and easy stuff! Slice, bake, put a hole and it's a bead! Yay! My last one was a Canada flag cane I did.

I pinned a drawn and cutout maple leaf on a block of red clay, cut out around it with my knife, then repeat on a block of white clay. Pop the cut out red maple leaf into the white one. Start squeezing and squishing together. Voila! Flag cane. They call those cookie cutter canes because you can do the same idea with small cookie cutters. I recommend doing that with the softer clays like Premo or Fimo Soft because they'll reduce better.

A simple sliding knot pendant necklace and earrings I made with the slices off that cane:

In the flickr album where those pics are are other examples of the same technique both as beads and finished jewelry. It really is an instant gratification type clay thing.