Successful canes...Failed baking...

These past few days, I've been playing around with my clay...and I decided to make my own canes. I watched some free tutorials on youtube and played with one of the tutorials there, changing a bit here and there...i forgot to take initial pictures because i was too excited...

and another...

I love the idea that this big canes can be reduced into smaller logs and the design stays the same...they look so intricate and amazing when they're tiny...

Seems like a good clay day, right....

Unfortunately, when you're still learning, the good sometimes comes with the bad...

I also decided to try using one of my mokume gane blocks. I took a small clear glass i had tucked away in the cupboards and covered it with thin slices of my mokume gane block. Here it was all covered...nice and pretty... I tried putting a candle inside just to get an idea of what it would look like...

Oooh, I am liking that...

So, this morning I fired up the oven, popped in the glass (covered around with cardboard) and waited, carefully checking back every so often as not to to burn it (I was worried since the clay was quite thin)...

At the end of cooking time I took out the glass...not knowing i would find this...

Awww...my beautiful mokume gane..... 

Oh well, its a lesson learned...I forgot to  put the glass ON TOP of cardboard or something that would prevent the burn. I enclosed it around the sides and didn't even think of the ends of the glass. I'll have to read up more about covering glass items because I'm really planning to come out with a bunch of these glass covered items. I think they're quite lovely!

I wonder if i can still do something to salvage this beauty...

That's all for now..have a great day!

until I came up with a big log tbat seemed a bit distorted in the ends

A World of Possibilities in Color

I love color...all shades...all tones....bright, muted, pastel, rainbow, earthy...love them all.... In polymer clay, however, I've been shying away. Don't get me wrong, my past works are loaded with color but, I never mix different colors of clay together. Instead, I take white clay and paint them with acrylics.

With that technique, though, there are still limitations. So, despite my fears of coming out with a muddy brown puke mix of clay, I decided to take a leap and try a new technique. Anyway, there is never any wasted clay....If worse comes to worst I can always paint any failed attempts...

So, I chose Mokume Gane (I thought it was pronounced as mo-koom gain...but I heard it pronounced as mo-ku-meh ga-neh and moe-koo-may gah-nay...which is right? i could not say...)....I watched a few youtube videos, scanned some tutorials online and within minutes pulled out my newly acquired clay (cutters and tissue blade) and got to work....

Here are the results to my experimentation with this new technique....

I'm in love....I really enjoy doing it since it's quite easy and fast. I didn't follow directions to the T... I'm a messy clayer and I just layered the clays any way sometimes with 2 colors or more in a layer. I wish I had taken pictures along the way. But, being so excited I forgot to pull out my camera. Anyway, it was my first time and I thought it wouldn't come out very nice.

Here's the final cube I made....top....

 and from the bottom...

In the top picture, I already have a few layers sliced off...I sliced off the top layer because I like the simple pattern...here's what it looked like....

I'm still thinking if I should make this into a pendant  as is. Although, I may cut it out into an oval...

This one will be used as a veneer...I made it from the thin slices I took from the block above...

And here are a few of the beads I have made so far...covering a black piece of clay with pieces from the veneer above...

The one above I also put a black frame around but I think I also wanted to make it a bit thicker so I'm thinking of adding another layer underneath...

For the bigger oval cabochon below, I made from scraps slightly kneaded together. I have yet to think of a use for the one I rolled up into a spiral...but, you can always find use for the scrap clays so, I am setting them aside...even that little round ball on the top left....

Now, that I am totally addicted, I wanna keep making these Mokume Gane blocks.... Next time, I'll have to take step by step photos. I think I need to add translucent clay as one of the layers and maybe incorporate more of the glitter while conditioning the clay so it really gets in there in different layers of the clay. 

My final goal here, actually is to try to get to that faux lampwork beads....I think with just the right polishing and gloss, I'm almost there...

That's all for now..have a good day!