craftgrrl | for those interested in *shudder* fimo, sculpey, etc..

I was working on a cane today and figured I'd take some pics while doing it..
a lot of people are curious about what I do, well, it's easiest to show..
so first, a brief explanation

I'm going to be quoting the PC encyclopedia here..
Pc- Polymer clay- Polymer clay is a polyvinyl chloride compound mixed with a plasticizer for flexibility and various fillers for texture and color. So..pvc..

Cane- A term borrowed from glassworking referring to glass rods either plain or with a pattern running through them, to be used as an addition to glass pieces. Canes were used to make millefiori beads.

after the cut you'll see a bunch of pictures of me putting together my tiffany cane with explanations.. this is my own design based on..well duh..tiffany stained glass :) after it's been reduced and had time to rest, I will either slice these into disk beads, or I'll slice thin thin slices off and apply them to another shape of beads ..millefiori..hundreds of beads will come from a cane this size...but lots of work and pain!
the pics may take a bit of time to come in, sorry about that, I wanted clear pics

we see me sending a skinner blend of blue through my machine...I'd explain a skinner blend, but you don't really care, do you? .

umm, it's a bloody big sheet of clay..

I've rolled up that big sheet of blue to make a gradient bullseye..done the same with the other colours..the reason I wanted the white in the middle was to simulated light coming through stained glass, of course! that's a lot of clay..hours and hours of work shown here, and probably 50$ worth of clay..ergh

I've made a 'lace' cane by wrapping the yellow in black, I keep cutting and recombining, then stretching till I get the look I want, then I've pinched the edges and sliced in 4..these are my wings

me putting together the body and head of the dragonfly

now I've packed all the extra spaces with the blue and green canes, surrounded in black..it looks a mess

now I'm squeezing the bleeding hell out of it to reduce it, I want it really long and thin, the picture should distort very little..ideally

I've whapped it in half, if I screw it up now, I still have half of it!

a slice and some thin slices applied to a ball..if I'd let it rest there would be less distortion, but I just wanted something to show you..

Now I would just cure and drill these... my actual beads will be quite a bit more even

I hope so anyway :)