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Return to Polymer
clay index 10-14-2019 - Carving a space to clay |
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One would think that
preparing ahead of time would be a prudent thing to do. But not on an
Aries Full Moon. It's "Fools Rush In" playing in the background of my
mind.  Now
I know what archeologists must feel like when digging for stuff that's
been buried for a while. Finding my pasta machine crank handle was a trek of its own, truth be known. I had to move a bunch of stuff that had accreted by my recliner over the period of years. What you can't see is I moved my printer where it would be easier to use. Only took a couple of years to get motivated to put it in a place where I could (1) reach it, (2) not have to move my recliner to have room for the paper tray to flop down, and (3) have it in a place where I'd use the scanner function more often because it wasn't a pain in the butt to access. But that's not part of the return to polymer clay saga. Or if it is it was a side trail to trek. I found where I stashed my clayshaper tools and wet/dry sand paper. I had to battle dust gorillas instead of dust bunnies to haul stuff out from under my work table, which is a 3 x 6 foot piece of plywood on milk crates that I've been using for 35 years.  One
nifty find was the notebook that had the notes for the Brown
Rose Cane . It is in the
Brown Rose Cane Draft section. One thing I want to emphasize with the new polymer clay tutorials here on this web site and on the YouTube videos is the benefit of planning. Now I know that PigKiller of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome is one of my favorite characters. Especially when he says, "Plan? Ain't no Plan!" But after a couple of decades of goofing around with polymer clay I've come to appreciate a bit of planning. Now if I could do that with my fiction writing I'll be right as rain, but that's another story. For a rose cane it's a good idea to gather pictures of roses off of the internet. Or if you have books with photos of roses. Then ask yourself a couple of questions: (1) What color do I want my rose to be? If one color it still needs shading. If two colors it needs to be a blend with a bit of shading. (2) What shape do the petals make when looking from top down? Because that's usually the way you want your rose cane to be viewed.  Let's
get a rose picture viewed from the top down and examine the shapes we're
going to be making as part of our cane. Look at the visible parts of the rose petals. Isolate one and you will see a BLEND from light pink, to pink to a dark red. The shape of each petal looks like a bent finger with knuckles to me. That's going to be the shape of your blend before you assemble the petals This time I'm going to put a separation sheet on the outside of each rose petal edge to make it stand out from the petals comes next in the construction. I won't be using gold polymer clay this time because gold is squishy and doesn't hold its shape when reducing the cane. I am still thinking of the colors I'm going to use. Something NOT rose like, maybe fire colors, or black and ox blood. Something for Halloween or Dias de los Muertos. Or maybe a bit of both. Deciding the color is part of the planning. Start your cane design on paper with colored pencils, crayons, or water colors. Deconstruct the 3D item and make it 2D so you can get the different sections separated on paper before you start mixing and blending colors. Well that's it for this entry for the Return to Polymer clay saga. |
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