New Beads

I kept my word to myself this time.  I didn't start playing with clay until I finished nearly 4" on my rope.  I've only got about 12 or so more inches to go!  Yea!  But as soon as I put the rope away, out came the clay.  My daughter Sara spent the night at my mil's house last night so it was just me and Matthew hanging out in the kitchen.  He was playing X-Box (as usual) and I was getting ready to play with clay.  I asked him if he wanted to help me, and he jumped right up ready to go.  He's always game!

I got this idea from Marie over at Art From My Heart.  Man, is she awesome!  She sent me a link to a cane that was made by stacking extruded squares on top of each other to form a pattern.  I pulled up my Bead Creator Pro program and decided to play around with making patterns.  Here are the steps Matthew and I took to make some new beads...

First, we decided on three colors:  white, red and light blue.  I wanted to bring light, medium and dark tones to hopefully give some contrast in the finished cane.  I think it's really hard to extrude clay.  We worked and worked and worked the clay both with the noodle bender (that's what my dh calls the pasta machine) and with our hands.  The blue was exceptionally hard to work with.  Maybe it was a stale block or something.  We put that clay through the bender at least 20 times, snaked it, mashed it.  We put it in the Stim Pak (that's what Matthew calls the extruder.  A Stim Pak is a thing that you use to heal yourself in the X-Box game Fallout...lol...always about the video games with him.)  Anyways we put the blue in the Stim Pak at least 3 times, couldn't get it to budge and started the conditioning process again and again.  And that was with us putting it with the plunger side on the table, my hands around the barrel pushing down and Matthew's hands on top of mine pushing down.  It would. not. go.  My hands were hurting!  I had him laughing so hard because I put the clay in his armpit to try to get it warm.  It was kinda funny.  I did finally manage to get it through, but I actually worked up a sweat working that Stim Pak!!!

Once we got all the clay extruded and cut to (sort of) even lengths, we started stacking.  Here's what it looked like to start off with:

I put it in the fridge for a while and then took it out to stretch and pull.  I took it in my bedroom, layed in bed, watched t.v. and stretched the cane in the dark.  It was easy to do with it being square.  After I stretched it, I cut it into 4 even pieces and stacked it again...

Ok, so maybe my squares didn't stay exactly square, but I thought it would add "character" to the cane. lol  Do you buy that?  I let it rest for a few minutes and stretched it out again.  Then I cut 4 more pieces and stacked again...

If you look at the stripes on the outside I do think I did a pretty good job keeping it straight.  And you can see how intricate the inside is getting.  One more time of stretching and pulling and this is what I got...

As interesting as the inside is, I liked the outside even more.  I let it rest for the night, but as I was laying in bed I had images swirling through my head on just how I was going to use this cane.  I really like it.  I think Matthew and I did a good job!  This morning I cut the cane into beads.  I poked holes in them, some of them length-wise and some of them sideways.  I'm going to alternate the beads going across and then up/down for a necklace with some rounds in matching colors in between.  Here are the final beads...

I made 18 of them...10 going long ways and 8 going up/down.  I goofed on one and made it a little shorter than the others, and one I started to drop and as I caught it I mushed the end a little.  I'll just put those in the back. :)  Do you like our striped beads? 

Also, I posted this pretty quick after my last post, so if you didn't see my leaf headpins I made scroll down to see those.

Playing with clay

Don't laugh!!!  I'm a beginner!  I've got so much to learn, and this is going to be a real process.  I have been searching as much as I can on the internet on making polymer clay beads as well as checked out a couple books from the local library.  I've been working on some very basic things, and the ONLY reason I'm showing you these things...not because I'm so proud of them...but because I'm hoping for some guidance (maybe Marie? :)

The first thing I did was a simple jellyroll.  Matthew helped me late one night over the weekend.  We had fun together!  We picked red and yellow...good high contrasting colors.  My first lesson was all about translucents.  lol.  The yellow didn't look so yellow after being baked.  Ok, so I think we did all right on the jellyroll...except that I can't cut them right.  I watched videos and read and watched more videos and read some more.  I learned that the clay has to rest in between steps or it will become distorted.  Check.  I'm not usually a patient person, so this will be a real test for me, but I did let the clay rest, and even refrigerated, between steps.  But the clay just seemed to get so warm and soft so fast.  When I would go to cut the slices they wouldn't stay round.  I even rolled the cane a little as I sliced downward like I'd seen the pros do.  But mine still came out all wonky. 

Next I decided to try a simple flower looking cane.  I chose a gold, bright blue, black and a hint of white (which was such a "hint" that it altogether disappeared later in the process).  I got the cane all cut, let it chill, stretched it out, let it chill, and then went to cut it.  Same problem...lopsided slices.  grrrr.  AND by looking at the petals I realized I was twisting as I was stretching because the circles became distorted.  Even so, I was ok with my first attempt at a flower cane.

Decided to go a step further and make that cane into another cane.  cut the pieces, stacked them, wrapped, let it chill in the fridge overnight.  The next day I stretched and pulled.  I did a much better job of keeping the cane straighter as I stretched this time.  BUT I still can't cut a slice to save my life. When I did the slices some were thicker than others.  On the really bad ones I was going to put the clay in the "mud" bag, but decided to see what it would look like if I made the garbage into beads.  Kind of a nice affect.  Lesson learned...nothing is garbage.  Try different things and you just might get something interesting. 

This is the "mud swirl" made from garbage

This is a side-by-side progression of my canes

After I let the slices and beads chill again, I tried making the bead holes through them.  They became even more distorted.  *whimper, sniffle*  Still I carried on.  Next was sanding.  That didn't last long.  How in the world do you sand something so small???  I couldn't even hold onto them, let alone sand them.  I ended up putting the sandpaper on the table and holding it with one hand while rubbing the tops and bottoms with the other hand.  I wonder how long one has to sand in order to get that glassy finish I've seen the pros do?

Oh...I forgot.  I also did some wrapped beads by layering four colors of circles into the extruder, pushing out long snakes, wrapping a core bead made from mud (again, using the garbage), baked them and then started sanding down through the layers of colors.  Looked really cool on the video, but it seems the only color I could get to show through was the orange.  There was also yellow and green in there.  Still a fun bead to make, and I'll probably play with this one a little more in the future.

So that was my adventure in an intro to polymer clay over the weekend.  No masterpieces yet. lol.  No...that will take quite some time, I'm sure.  But I'll keep you posted on my progress.  And anyone who wants to chime in with any tips, I'm ready for it!!!  Oh!  I've got some molds on order that I'm hoping come any day now in the mail.  Got about 5 different cab molds.  It will be fun to swirl colors and powders and glitter together to see what happens!  Will post more on that later.

Bead happy.