I wanted to share some insights into caning with all of you.  The past few days have been an exploration in my history with polymer clay.  From the moment I started working with polymer clay, I was interested in EVERYTHING having to do with it.  There isn’t enough time to explore every aspect of it in a short amount of time, but I truly tried to do so. 

Along with all of my other early experiments, I made a few canes.  I quickly realized though, that this was not something that was going to be easy to learn.  I was fortunate to find a brand new group starting on Facebook to address exactly this problem.  The group, “52 Weekly Cane Projects” began, and I was eager to join it and start my journey.  I, along with many others, followed Rian Schreuder-Sanderse every week as she pulled us along in our exploration of canes.  She was tireless, patient, helpful, and encouraging.  As a result, we were all completely mesmerized by the process and jumped in to try the cane/s for that week. 

Fast forward about 6 months and my health started to deteriorate.  I could no longer keep up with the group and soon was having trouble doing ANY claying at all.  It’s been a year and a half since then, and finally I am starting to see a little light at the end of the tunnel.  I will never again be as healthy as I was before. I discovered some new health conditions that will never go away, and these conditions increase the problems from other health conditions I already had.  I am finally at a point where all of my conditions are as good as they are going to get.  I am on the proper medications, I have learned what to do to control them as best I can, and now comes the part of just living with them.  I am finally going back to what I love doing and have been spending more time in my studio. 

Now, having said that, there is a ramping up that is required to get back to claying as much as I was before.  The muscles are out of shape, the concentration isn’t as good, and then there is the backlog of projects that must be gotten through before I can get to work on anything new.  Working on projects that have been sitting around for a long time means that I have to get back into that head space.  I have to try to remember what I was doing, why, and where I was going with it.  It’s tiring, so I need a break now and then.  But I don’t really want to start on a completely new project other then something very short and quick.  Last thing I need is to have another half-finished project taking up space. 

So, as a break, and to clean up my studio a bit, I have been going back to my canes.  All of my canes are kept in either plastic see through shoe boxes, well wrapped in cling wrap, or in bead boxes for the smaller canes.  I started to organize my canes, this includes the cane ends and bits and pieces of old canes that only have a couple of slices left. 

The first thing I did was separate all the canes ends and bits and pieces into one box.  Then all of the left over bits from creating canes, like plane wrapped colors, or bullseye canes, spiral canes, etc., went into another box labeled “elements”.  Then I sorted all of the canes. 

While doing this I received a revelation.  Although I had a cane from every week of the group for the first six months, only SOME of them were usable.  I discovered that first, some of the colors had bled into the surrounding cane, (I have since learned that I should wrap some of the pearl colors in a solid color so they don’t bleed past that point).  Second, some of the canes were so boring that I couldn’t think of anything to use them for, (usually this was because of my choice in color combinations).  Last of all, some of them were so distorted or uneven, that they would have to be fixed to see if they had any usable cane left, (sadly, some were a complete loss). 

I made a new box labeled, “scrap canes or re-blend”.  And that’s what I have been doing.  Going through and making scrap canes when I can, or, if the colors are too boring, re-blending them into a new color.  In only a few cases the re-blended colors ended up being mud.  Most of them were actually usable colors and can be reused later in other projects or canes. 

Usually I am very anal about my colors.  I carefully blend them, making a recipe as I go along so that I can recreate it if I want.  This is of course impossible in the case of scrap colors.  Usually I use those scrap colors in small projects or small canes.  If the new color is too small of an amount, I save it and re-blend it again into something else that might need a bit of oomph to liven up the color and save it from mud. 

I am finding though, that in some cases, just fixing the cane, smoothing it, making sure it’s a uniform size, getting rid of messed up ends, the cane is salvageable. I am learning though, that I made a lot of mistakes in my early cane experiments, and even in the early weeks of the group.  The one consistent problem I am running into is that I was impatient and that was my biggest difficulty with caning. 

So, now that I am more experienced and better at making canes, and I am more patient with the process, I can see exactly where I went wrong. I am also finding that I can tell where my impatience overcame me in the process of the cane, what I did wrong, and how to fix it in the future.  It’s amazing to see that it’s really clear where the problems were created, as if I am looking at a map. 

I thought I might share some of these insights, and see if maybe I can prevent someone else having to redo a bunch of work down the line. 

1.  I can’t stress this enough, patience is your best tool with caning.  If you aren’t patient, every bit of work you do will be wasted, or at least you will end up with a much smaller amount of usable cane then you wanted.
2. When you are using the slab, or tube, or whatever beginning shape your clay starts in, make sure it is uniform.  If you start with something uneven, it will just get worse over time.  Take the time to make it as uniform as possible, even if that means it takes you a long time to make each element.  It’s annoying, but if you start from messy, your end result will be even messier.  So, take the time to clean up the edges, cut off the bad part, even though you don’t want to waste that beautiful color, or the effort that went into the really complex process.  Believe me, letting go of that few mm of clay will save you a lot of hassle in the long run.  Those bits and pieces can be re-blended, put into a scrap cane, or used to make some little do dad of its own.  DON’T make the mistake of thinking that you are saving that little piece by including it in the cane.  For all intents and purposes you are actually handicapping yourself and making it very difficult to get a good cane later. 
3. Put together the elements, then…STOP!  Don’t try to do anything with it yet.  Put it down, walk away.  You are making your job VERY hard if you try to do anything with it in this state.  The elements that you worked so hard on, are now warm, squishy, and easily distorted.  If you think you can be careful, think again.  Every color of clay, even of the same brand, can have a different texture or property to it.  Once you take basic clay and add anything, the result is randomized.  Each item they use to change the color of the clay, has its own weight and texture.  The result is that every color can reduce at a different rate.  The ONLY way to counteract this is to start at the same temperature and manipulate it slowly.  So again, put it down, don’t touch it, and walk away. 
4. Now, having said that, how long do you leave it alone depends on what you did to it, how many elements, how hot your hands are, how hot your house is, and how rapidly the temperature on the cane changes.  My standard is, overnight.  If it’s warm in my house, then overnight in the fridge.  That gives the cane time to settle down, get to an equal temperature throughout, and gives you time to get back your patience.  Remember that?  Patience is what you don’t have after working on the cane for however long.  What you have is eagerness.  You want to see the result of all your hard work.  You are excited at the possibilities, and you want to see if you screwed up at some point.  It’s SO hard to have patience at this point, but again, it’s your most important tool. 
5. Ok, so your cane has rested overnight.  Time to work on it…except…STOP.  Look at the cane.  The ends are all messed up, there might not be pattern all the way to the end, or it’s distorted somehow.  This is where your patience pays off.  Because the cane is completely rested, cutting the end off straight is easy.  I can’t tell you how many times, (eager to see my result), that I cut the end of the cane off, or cut into the center, just to see what it looked like.  It was warm still, so the end is all squashed up, no longer in the shape it is supposed to be in.  The outer later has sort of overlapped on the end, because as I passed the blade through the cane, it dragged the warm edges over the area and is now covering part of the cane.  So, now, since it’s rested, it comes off cleanly and I can see the pattern, or I can’t, which means cut off more.  Sometimes it’s at this point I find out that I screwed up somewhere and there is no usable cane because no matter how far in I cut the cane, there is no pattern that isn’t screwed up.  At this point I just add it to the scrap pile to be repurposed, (usually as a scrap cane).  The reason you don’t want to use the cane without cutting off the messy ends is…messy end = messed up cane.  So make sure you are starting from a clean cut that is even. 
6. Now, you probably want a smaller cane.  Very few projects start off with the cane in the exact size you created it.  It’s time to reduce. Hold on though…before you start reducing, you might want to cut off a part of that cane at that size.  You can’t make a cane bigger, so on the assumption that you will be using this cane in many projects, you will probably need it in different sizes.  Plus, storing canes is easier at a bigger size.  So, cut off part of the cane, wrap it up and put it away.  You want to do this at every stage of reducing the cane so you have graduated sizes.  
7. Ok…you put away part of the cane and now…finally, it’s time to reduce the cane.  Reducing is the most difficult part of caning, and requires…you guessed it…PATIENCE!  The biggest mistake I have made with reducing is trying to do it all at once.  If the cane was warm to begin with because I had just gotten done making it, I would have been better off not to make it at all.  But let’s assume I was able to put off reducing it the first time till after it had rested.  Now I have a cane that I want to reduce to another size.  It may be just a little bit smaller, or I may want to reduce it to a 20^th of its size.  Either way, I have to do it slowly.  Starting from the middle, I push a little bit all the way around to start the process.  If you are expecting it to push in very far, you will notice right away that the cane is hardly moving at all.  This is good. This means it’s exactly the right temp to start working on.  You want to gradually go down the line of the cane pushing exactly how hard you did in the middle, till you get to the end, and then repeat the process on the other side. 
8. At this point look at the end of the canes.  If the middle is starting to cave in, there are two possible reasons.  Either it’s warm in one part of it, or the clay consistency is different at the center then the outer edges. 
9. If the clay is a different consistency there isn’t much you can do about it.  You just have to go very slow and resign yourself to losing a part of your cane at the end.  Sometimes, no matter what you do, this is going to happen.  Again, with different things used to create the colors, you are going to find that different colors in the same brand can still be of different denseness.  This means they will reduce at a different rate, and you get caving inwards. 
10. If, however, that isn’t the problem, it leads back to the temperature.  If you didn’t let it rest enough, put it down, walk away.  If you DID let it rest enough, it might be that you have warm hands, your place is warm, or a combination of these.  What happens is that the outer part of the cane is warming up faster than the inner part of the cane.  This can happen very quickly after working on the cane.  Sometimes you can’t reduce more than one size before you have to let it rest again.  But if you try to rush it, you will get messed up ends, caving, and unusable cane.  The solution is, put it down, walk away, let it cool off and rest.  I have taken days to reduce a cane, because I had worked so hard on it and I didn’t want to lose half the cane to impatience.  The time for this to happen, varies based on your home’s ambient temperature, (again, if it’s warm, put it in the fridge). 
11. After you have finally reduced your cane to the size you want, put it down, walk away.  If you try to cut it right after reduction, you are going to get that drag from your blade and the outer edge will drag across the pattern.  Let it rest again and THEN cut it. 
12. Congratulations, you have finished a cane.  It might have taken you days to do one simple cane.  You will get better at judging where and when you need to stop and rest it.  Practice and experience, and of course patience, will help with this.  All I can tell you is that you get faster as you get more experienced, but at a certain point, there isn’t any faster you can go. 

Caning is very rewarding, as long as you do the right things and jump through all of the hoops.  I can tell you though, when I wasn’t following the patience rule, it was frustrating and wasteful.  I ended up having so much that didn’t work that I had BOXES of scrap that I needed to repurpose.  Now that I know though, I have so much more fun caning then I used to.  I find it much easier to follow the patience rule when I am either working on multiple canes at the same time, or working on another project at the same time.  It helps to distract me from the mistake of doing things too soon.  I hope these insights have helped you in some way, I wanted to give back to a community that has been one of the most supportive and kind group of people I have ever met.  I can’t thank you all enough for your encouragement and compassion.  With any luck, I will get to give back some more as I go on.  Thanks everyone for your time in reading my lengthy post.  J

  

This newest project has a story behind it.  When I started with polymer clay less then a year ago, there was of course a lot to learn.  One of the things I didn't understand was the difference in all the different polymer clay brands.  I started off with Sculpey III which is very widely available and has a fantastic array of colors.  I also picked up a few bars of Premo, usually because there was a color that caught my eye that didn't exist in Sculpey III.  I had no idea that Sculpey III is more of a student version of clay.  Anyways, my very first cane was done with Premo.  I chose it because it had the colors I wanted and I didn't have in Sculpey III.  This was fortunate because it doesn't distort as much as Sculpey III and so my cane actually came out mostly the way I wanted.  Weeks later, I was making a bowl, and the colors I wanted to use I only had in Sculpey III.  I proceeded to learn a very important lesson.  The canes came out very distorted and didn't look anything like what I wanted them too.  I made the bowl anyways since I had already made them, and called it good.  I entered that very bowl into a competition in the magazine Polymer Cafe, even though it was my least favorite piece and was honestly not very good in my opinion.  I didn't really expect anything to come of it, but I wanted to get used to entering contests, so I did it anyways.  Much to my surprise the bowl actually won 5th place in the January/February edition of Polymer Cafe.  Here is the bowl if you don't remember it from me posting it awhile ago.

Now I told you this story to give you some background how this new piece came to be, (and to boast a little bit about placing in a contest. :p)  

The leftover pieces of the canes I used in this bowl have sat in a container since then.  I wasn't sure what to do with them, but I didn't want to just mash them up and turn them into scrap.  I am glad I waited now because they are going to make great starts to pendants and earrings, bracelets, and rings. I joined a group on Facebook a couple of weeks ago that is called "52 weekly cane projects".  I really wanted to learn more about caning, and also to get to know more people that work with polymer clay.  I have learned a lot in two weeks, but one of the things I learned wasn't in the lessons we have had so far.  One of the people in the project turned their cane into something I hadn't seen before.  It's called the "Natasha technique", as well as a few other things.  It takes something that would normally end up in a scrap pile and saves it and turns it into something beautiful.  When I saw the tutorial for it, I fell in love and immediately thought of those canes sitting in the box that I hadn't touched in months.  The use of those canes inspired this necklace, and it cascaded from there.  I worked very hard on this piece, and there were times I wondered why I was doing it.  But now that it is all done, I am SO glad I did it and persisted. (even though my hands are NOT glad)

The Natasha part is the center of the pendant.  It's made with manipulating several colors of clay and then cutting it open and refitting it to make a mirror image.  After making that part, I played around with ideas for a few days and then it came to me.  It reminded me of Africa and the ivory trade there.  It also reminded me of the art of "scrimshaw", which is when bone or ivory is carved into and then stain is done on it to pick out the design.  I combined these two ideas and came up with this necklace.  All of the pieces done in this necklace were done with Premo.

I started with the central part and then built up the ivory part around it.  There are several tutorials out there for doing Faux ivory or bone.  I looked at them all and decided to go with the one that has you tear the pieces of ivory color you created to put them on the translucent slab you have prepared.  Once I had a large sheet of it conditioned, I finished the pendant with a piece of clay that was part gold Premo Accents and part Premo Burnt Umber.  When it was done, I textured it and put some bronze Pearl Ex powder on it to bring out the glitz and the appearance of metal.  I added the piece of "bone" at the top to give it interest and capped each end with some of the bronze clay and textured to make it look like metal.   I then concentrated on the beads.   I wanted to use mostly pc beads, so I went for more faux ivory.  I made two kinds of beads in the same ivory I had done on the pendant.  I rolled the round beads over a texture sheet in random ways to get it to look like it had been carved or handled for a long time.  For the flat round beads I used two texture sheets that are exactly the same.  I put the bead in between and pressed to get the impression on both sides.  After the beads were baked, I antiqued them.  I used a wash of Liquitex acrylic paint in burnt umber, then I sanded them to show the design.  Then I sanded some more, then when I was done I sanded some more.  My fingers are killing me from holding small beads between my fingers.  At the end I learned a few tricks about how to make that faster, and the last half of the beads went VERY fast.  I also did a wash of the ivory on the pendant to match.  You will notice lots of nicks and imperfections on the ivory beads and pendant.  These were created intentionally to imply great age and lots of handling.  When I was done I decided I needed a couple of accent beads and used some of the left overs from the pendant central design to make two rough beads with hammered edges.  I used some bronze colored glass spacer beads to go in between each of the beads.  I used a 1mm black cording and crimping clasps to finish off the piece.   

I am still deciding if I am going to make a pair of earrings and bracelet to match, but in the meanwhile I am enjoying my new necklace.  I honestly don't make many pieces for myself, I always seem to be making it for other people.  As a result I only have a few pieces of jewelry that I have made.  This piece though is one I am keeping, I know exactly what I will wear it with.  I am very happy with how it came out and am planning on entering it into the International Polymer Clay Association yearly contest.  I don't know if it will win, but I am willing to give it a shot. I hope you all like how it turned out.  This is one of my favorite pieces that I have done.  I would love to hear from you all on what you think.  

As always, thank you for visiting my corner of the internet!! :)

Sharon Mhyre

So it's been a couple of months since I have posted.  I had a rough time in November and I didn't really feel like doing much.  I am better now and have had a really productive month.  I will post most of the work after the holidays, but I wanted to share these three gifts I made for Christmas.

The first is a picture of an altoid tin I decorated for my mother-in-law.  She loves frogs and I wanted her to have something bright and colorful.  I worked really hard on this and I think it's the best polymer clay piece I have made.  All of it is made with Sculpey Premo.  I used mostly regular colors, and also pearl.  I used alot of Pearl Ex powders for the different metallic and pearly shines.  I also made a cane for the green leaf fronds.  I could not have done this without my new Czextruder.  It was a life saver being able to do all the extruding with a drill to do the turning.  I want to thank Kimberly Idalski at http://www.artfire.com/ext/shop/studio/kimis-jewelry-from-the-heart for being the U.S. distributor and helping me with my questions.  I really appreciate it, and I love my new extruder. :)

I decided to seal the powders with Fimo Deco Gel rather then use a high gloss acrylic coating like I normally do.  I didn't really want it to be too shiny, and I thought the Deco Gel would also make it so that none of the pieces would fall off.  I think it worked pretty well, although I think next time I am going to try to thin the Deco Gel a little bit. The coating came out a little thicker then I wanted, and it also disintegrated my paint brush.  Other than that, it actually came together fairly easily.  It took quite awhile to get all the elements in place, but I didn't have any trouble with any of it.  I hope you like it, would love to know what you think.

The next piece is also for my mother-in-law.  It's a whimsical brooch, I wanted her to have something to make her laugh and be able to wear for Christmas.  This is all made with Sculpey Premo.  The frame is made with Premo 18k gold color, the background is Premo Pearl mixed with a little white to brighten it up.  The bell on the hat was made with the 18k gold as well.  When I was done with it all, I ended up going back and adding Pearl Ex to the bell and the frame.  It wasn't as shiny as I wanted and I figured it added a little sparkle.  I probably should have added some sparkle to the Christmas lights too, but I was so tired by that point that I ended up skipping it.  I sealed the parts with the Pearl Ex powders with Crystal Varathane because I wanted that hard glossy shine.  On the back is a brooch pin and also a loop so it can be used as a pendant or even a Christmas ornament too.  I hope you like my Santa Frog, he was a lot of fun to make. :)

The last piece I am sharing is actually three pieces given together.  My husband's aunt crochet's and I wanted to give her something to make it a little easier on her hands.  We gave her a subscription to a crochet magazine, so hopefully these will be useful too.  I used Sculpey Premo in the pearl colors and metallics, and some white glitter clay for one of them.  I did mokume gane to give it some interest, but I wanted it to be very smooth so I didn't add any canes.  They turned out pretty good considering all the trouble I had.  I used a sampler pack for the blues and pink and purple.  I didn't realize it was old until I started trying to condition it.  The pearl colors just flaked and flaked and I ended up putting some clay softener on them and letting them sit for a half an hour.  I don't normally have this kind of trouble with Premo, it's usually really great.  Anyways, by the time I was done with all of them, I was glad I had decided only to do mokume gane.  Anything else would have had me falling over from exhaustion.  It was worth it though, they turned out really pretty.  I tried to take a picture that would do them justice, but I just couldn't get the lighting right and I was too tired to set up my light box.  Hope you can tell how nice they look. :)

Well, that's it for my pictures today.  I will be sure to post more after the holidays.  I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas, (or whatever you celebrate or if you don't, a good week), and a Happy New Year!!!

Thanks for visiting my corner of the web!!

Sharon Mhyre

As promised, I am putting up another picture today.  I made this awhile ago actually, just finished putting the ribbon and beads on it yesterday.  This was made as a present to the wonderful lady that does my hair, Angela.  She is a real sweetheart, so I made her a sign to show that she wears her heart out there for everyone to see.  It's all made from Premo Sculpey.  I hope you like it!!  :)

Thanks for visiting my corner of the web!!

Sharon Mhyre

I was very productive today, I made some presents for people and even managed to find time to make myself a pair of earrings.  I will only post two pictures for this blog and save the rest for later.  Some of the people I made presents for read my blog and I don't want them to see their presents early.  After they get them I will post the pictures.  Most won't be till after the holidays...a few will be in the next couple of weeks though. :) 

This first picture is of a present I made for my dentist.  I have a dental appointment tomorrow and I wanted to make something for him to thank him for all his hard work with me.  When I started seeing him about 8 years ago, I was absolutely terrified of dentists.  My teeth were in terrible shape, and it took him a half hour to get me calm enough to just do the shot.  Over the years he has been working with me so carefully that I managed to go to a dental surgery with a different dentist, (he doesn't do root canals), and I didn't even shake before hand.  Since tomorrow is Halloween, I wanted to give him something to celebrate the holiday, but since he is a dentist, I didn't think giving him something sweet was the right choice.  So I made him a Halloween ornament.  This vampire tooth ornament is all in good fun, and I hope he likes it.

I made this using Premo Sculpey.  I started with a ball of tinfoil for the center.  I looped some wire and stuck it in the foil and then I wrapped the tinfoil in masking tape to make clay stick to it more.  It also secured the wire, which was a little loose.  I then covered the whole thing in white Premo sculpey and shaped it, adding balls where I needed them.  I made the eyes, mouth, fangs, necklace, and cloak.  I baked the whole thing for about an hour and then I did a little bit of accent painting.  I also painted the plain white with some sparkly white paint I had.  It helped it to glow a bit and took care of some of the bits of stuff that had gotten into the white when I wasn't looking, (mostly cat hair).   It was fun to make and came out better then I hoped for.  Let me know what you think.

The next picture is of the pair of earrings I made myself.  I wanted something light hearted to celebrate the day with even though I wasn't going to be doing anything special for it.  I really like how these turned out.  I tried something new with them.  I hadn't made stud earrings yet and I also tried a new glue.  I have seen the glue on several polymer clay sites as being safe to use, so hopefully it holds well.  I can't wait to put these on tomorrow.  If these work out, I think I will be making alot more stud earrings for myself.  I don't tend to wear dangly earrings because my hair is so long it gets caught.  So hopefully this opens up alot of new options for me. Hope you like these.

Thats all I am gonna share at the moment.  Hope you all liked these new pieces.  Thanks for visiting my corner of the web!! :)


Sharon Mhyre

Hey everyone,

I was going through some of my pictures of projects and realized that there were a couple that I never posted back in May.  Figured I would post them over the next few days.  Here is the first one.  I made this intending it to be my new business card holder, then discovered that because of the rounded corners, it wouldn't fit business cards.  Oh well, I am sure I can find something to do with it.  This is a covered altoid tin, first time I made one.  The clay I used was Premo black.  I then brushed on pearl ex powder pigments in different colors and got this nice sort of raku effect.  I really love the colors.  Hope you all like it.

Thanks for visiting my corner of the web!!!

Sharon

Hey all,

I made another bowl.  This one is going into my bedroom next to my bed.  I use those hair squiggies, (not sure what other people call em, but like rubber bands with cloth over them), and they keep dropping on the floor.  It's driving me nuts looking for them.  So I decided I needed to make another bowl to hold them all.  My bedroom is done in dark brown, silver, and a moss green.  I didn't want to make the bowl in a color that I couldn't keep if I changed the accent color, so I decided to stick with shades of brown.  Unfortunately, the only brown I had was in Sculpey III.  I didn't even have any colors I could mix to make brown with Premo.  So I threw caution to the winds and started making canes with the Sculpey III.  It was definitely harder to make canes with than Premo.  All of the canes sort of morphed and became abstract designs.  I actually like them, but they totally don't look the way I had originally planned them to.  I tried a slightly different technique this time applying the clay to the bowl.  It actually worked much better and there was alot less fixing that I had to do.  I still need to figure out a way to smooth the inside without destroying the design.  Not sure how to do that yet, but I am working on it.  Anyways, I used five colors, one of which was white.  The other four are various shades of brown.  I used a skinner blend in several places, stacked some sheets for the alternate colors, and just generally messed with things till I was satisfied. I had alot of fun making this one, and I hope you all like it.

Thanks for visiting my corner of the web!!

Sharon