Part 1 of a 2-part series: The emotional thrill of polymer clay caning
Now if you have had nothing but frustration and squished
canes when you’ve tried to make polymer clay canes, you’ll think a crazy person
wrote that title. But, although “perfectly normal” is not always included in a
description of me, I’m not crazy, honest!
These days, I love making polymer clay canes. But it was not
always so. I spent a small fortune for years buying beautiful canes from other
clayers to use in my work. Behind the scenes, with many disturbing failures
along that road, I tried to make my own canes. Eventually, it all came together
for me. However, I recall my frustrations then clearly and I care very much
about your frustrations now. It’s awful!
If you’re not currently a “caner” and find the process
wrought with frustration, what can you do to make your caning results better
and actually enjoyable? How can you find that emotional thrill at the end of
every cane making session that sends you back to making more and better canes?
I’ll try to share some of my most important tips and tricks
here, along with instructions for some basic canes. These are the things that
work for me and not necessarily the way everybody does it.
There is always some “waste” involved in polymer clay cane
making. However, “waste not, want not” is our motto, so save those cane ends
and extra bits! They can be used in other projects.
The clay matters
For now, we need to talk about the choice of brand of clay
for caning. I’ll keep this as short as I can, however, with the clay companies
constantly changing our medium, pulling and adding colors, and changing the
viscosity of our clay, it is a big and important subject that deserves your
attention.
For the purpose of this article, I’ll try not to go into too many
details. Suffice to say that, in my opinion, you shouldn’t even try to make
canes with some of the clay available. They have their place, but not in the
caning process. Those are Studio by Sculpey, Sculpey III, and Fimo Soft. Some
people can do it… but I can’t so I refer you away from those. A lot of people
use Premo… again, while you can get some results, they aren’t going to be the
best when you’re looking for crisp patterns. My recommendations are Kato Clay,
Pardo Art Clay (not Pardo Jewellry Clay) and Fimo Classic.
I use Kato clay most
of the time. The problem lately is that Kato has changed their formula and the
clay is far softer than it ever was. However, I have experimented a little and
the new Kato still holds a pattern quite well. If you buy new packages, you’ll
need to let them sit for a couple of months to harden up a bit. Don’t leach…
just leave it sitting in the package. The drawback to Kato clay for me is their
color palette, which means that I can spend days just mixing colors (and not an
easy process with the choices given).
However, Kato clay stays true to color
when it’s baked, which Fimo Classic does not. Although I like the way Fimo
Classic handles and I love their colors, the baking color change makes it not a
viable choice for me. I have only experimented a little bit with the Pardo Art
Clay, but it works great for patterns. It’s quite difficult to condition and
I’ve had to mix other clay into it just to get it conditioned, so at this time
Kato works best for me.
Part 2 of this series will give you some tips for creating classic cane patterns.
No comments:
Post a Comment