How do you make these gorgeous polymer clay canes?

Question

how do you make these gorgeous polymer clay canes?

They look amazing and I cant get my head around how you make them with such intricate pitures inside...please help

Answer 1

As with most things - google it

Theres loads of pages for it - I just looked for you but couldn't pick one to link as I didn't even know what they were lol

Answer 2

Google Polymer clay cane picture  you will be amazed ;)))

Answer 3

First, there are all types of images one can end up with after making polymer clay "canes."  

Some are simple, some are very complex.  Some are simple to do, some are fiddly and more difficult.  Some are geometric, some are "picture" canes --those are probably the ones you're thinking of, where there's a image of a flower or landscape or face, etc., running through the length of the cane.

There are a few basic ways to put pieces of clay together to make canes just in general.



Picture canes are mostly made from long pieces of clay of different colors which are shaped exactly the same all along their length, and in the shape one would want in the image when looking at them from one end... for example, to create a crescent moon in a sky as a polymer clay cane, you'd shape a long piece of white clay into an crescent-shaped log, then surround that long white crescent-shaped log all around its length with black or dark blue pieces of clay to create the "sky"... then usually the whole thing is rolled into a round log shape or pressed  into a square log shape...when that cane is cut crossways at any point, you'll see a white crescent moon in a dark sky as the final "cane slice".  

The process can get more complicated than that, but basically that's the idea.

Another basic way of putting the pieces of clay together is to stack sheets of on top of each other (that would create a cane with "stripes" of color when sliced).

EDITED LATER TO ADD:

Or if one sheet of color is laid exactly on top of one or more other sheets of color, the layers can then be rolled up just like a jellyroll.  When sliced, the image will be a spiral which some clayers also call a jellyroll cane.  

Or those layers could be *folded* in various ways instead of rolled up, for other effects.

Another very basic and common technique is to “"wrap" a sheet of clay around a fat log of clay like a blanket around a baby ...in its most basic form, that results in a cane that has a "bullseye" image running through it.

There are all kinds of variations though.  

As one example, sometimes "translucent' clay is used for all the background areas of a cane, and an opaque clay color is used for the image parts of a cane, say to make a flower cane... when that cane is sliced really thin and placed over other clay patterns and baked, the translucent areas "disappear" and all that's seen is the image (flower, etc.) "floating" over the background of whatever the base clay looked like.

You can find loads of info on all the basics of making polymer clay canes (plus how to "reduce" them which makes them smaller --that's usually done), as well as lessons on making many specific canes, at my polymer clay "encyclopedia" website on these pages:

http://glassattic.com/polymer/Canes--gen...

http://glassattic.com/polymer/canes--red...

http://glassattic.com/polymer/canes--ins...

P.S.  If you want info about any other aspect of polymer clay, check out all the other things covered at my site too, from the "Table of Contents" page:

http://glassattic.com/polymer/contents.h...

...scroll all the way down... when you find a topic you're interested in reading about, click on the page's name from inside the alphabetical navigation bar on the left side to go to it

There are also polymer clay groups online, as well as books and videos etc, that you might want to check out to start learning (for info on those, look on the pages at my site called *Groups-Online*  and *Books & Videos, Etc*)

HTH,

Diane B.•