Phew, things have been rough at work. All I did over the last couple of weeks was literally go to work, come back late at night and fall into bed. Sadly that left very little time for claying (or anything really). So I don’t have any completed piece to show off. I’m trying to scrape together time to finish my red, blue and white themed swap. It was to be shipped in June!! I had so many ideas for this one: I really wanted to try an extruded star cane for this, and maybe some bargello. But I had no time for that. I have a couple of pieces almost done, will be sending it off on Monday. Want a sneak peak? Here’s a “compact” mirror with a free style cane veneer. I picked up a small square mirror and built a hinge and cover for it. More on this later, it’s a part of a swap so don’t want to give away too much.
Mirror covered with freestyle cane
I did experiment with Teresa Salgado’s cane bender style cane using Souffle clay. I didn’t like the original triangle section much, but the assembled square looks good to me (the two canes on the left). I used the remaining blends I had for another cane in similar colors. I plan to cover another box with slices of all these different canes. Since they were constructed using the same set of colors I’m hoping they’ll be in harmony. My first instinct is to cover the whole thing with slices of the same cane. But that’s…boring! Since I’m not brave enough to try patching together completely different canes slices, using a set of similar ones seems to be a good start.
Freestyle canes using cane benders
I got me a big bunch of fondant supplies and have been dying to try them out. These are mostly petal cutters for different flowers and a couple of border cutters. I’ve been very into clay flowers since I took the plunge and got Iris Mishly’s entire Flower Academy set. Here’s my first rose below in a random pot. While I wasn’t too happy with this to begin with, it does resemble a real rose. So that’s good! I’m playing with some variations of this and will hopefully improve my technique. It’s fairly time consuming since each petal has to be formed and shaped individually.
Polymer clay rose
Tune in next time, hopefully I’ll have more clay time soon!
P.S: I mentioned being into Grimm last time, but boy did that show turn soap opera-ish real soon. Without many other options (or time), I’ve started watching Supernatural. I’ve caught a couple of episodes before so I have an idea about the show. And with eleven seasons, that should keep me busy for a while!
The Beaded Bazaar 