Thin Is Great For People - Not for Canes

I have a wolf update for you. So I remade my wolf cane. This time I gave up on the play dough and filled with a background. Now I decided to keep the cane thin like last time. This made the cane much easier to make but not easier to reduce. I was really feeling optimistic since the reduction of the previous wolf went pretty well. Well not so much this time. I packed the cane with scrap clay as before but it just didn't go well. In the picture you can see all the sections of cane that have the gray scrap clay coming through. There was 10 ounces of clay in the original cane and I ended up with 3 ounces of usable cane. Oh the waste. Oh well. It is what it is. At least I have enough for my Red Riding Hood cane.

First Lesson for 2012 - Don't Be Stupid

Happy New Year everyone. As we tend to do each year I came up with some new resolutions. One seems to be the same every year - lose some weight. Another for me are to update this blog. I really need to update the slide show that appears on the right. My flickr pictures are all old so I need some work there.

I have a lot of ideas for canes this year. I thought I'd do some with a fairy tale theme. I love the new show on ABC "Once Upon a Time". So I have a preliminary sketch and I dive into the clay. (This also keeps my hands away from the food!) I spend most of the first day of 2012 working on a section of the cane. It is of a wolf that I hope to work into the larger "Red Riding Hood" cane. Trying to figure out how to do this I decide to keep the cane very shallow. It is between 1/4 to 1/2 inch deep. This allows me to cut into the clay using an exacto blade. Everything is going fine. I build the cane.

Then I get stupid. I really don't know exactly how this segment is going to fit into the whole cane so I have this brilliant idea to use the play dough technique. If you haven't tried this before, this is where you wrap the cane with play dough, reduce the cane and then remove the excess clay. I stupidly thought I would be able to fill in the reduced wolf with the selected background color later. You can see the play dough is the orange around the wolf. The cane measure 9 X 4 X 1/2 inches. I pack the entire clay with scrap clay. This is necessary because of the shallow depth of the cane. (at least it is necessary for me)

The good news is that I learned that I can reduce a cane this shallow but the bad news is that I learned that it will be too hard to repack the reduced cane later. The play dough did work great so I will keep that in mind for future projects. I may try baking the wolf pieces and see if I can slice off the baked clay. I have a little bit of the cane still encased in scrap clay that I should be able to slice off, soak off the play dough and then use for something.

I have to start the cane over but I did learn some lessons today. Stay tuned and I hope to post more about my Red Riding Hood cane.

Grand Mama What Big Eyes You Have

I never knew my maternal grandmother but I always loved this little pin that belonged to my mother. It was a picture of my grandmother when she was just a girl. I also always wondered why she didn't pass on her good looks and peaches and cream complexion to me. I decided I would try to do a cane of her. Like most of my canes it was not an easy thing. I have talked about my recent frustration with the inconsistency of clay. I happened on some Fimo classic on sale and bought up a bunch of cream colored clay. I liked the feel of it in the package but I wasn't sure how it would do mixed with my Kato. I did some preliminary testing and the color seemed to be OK after baking and it also took the higher Kato temperatures. I liked working with it. The clay was firm but would stick together when I wanted and yet I could pull it apart for "surgeries" that were required. Of course the big test will be when I try to reduce this "mother". (pun intended) I will let you know how it goes with the reduction.

I built the cane in six sections. You can see them all together as slices in the one photo. On previous mosaic canes my extruded pieces were made up of combinations of color. I decided to extrude individual colors to maintain the more muted palette of the pin. I don't think I quite captured her beauty but I hope she is looking down and appreciating the effort her granddaughter made.

Not sure of the market value of this cane but since I don't sell too often I guess it won't affect my pocketbook too much. Of course everyone in my family can expect something made out of it for Christmas whether they want it or not.

Like a Proud Parent

I started this post about a month ago. (as it was recently brought to my attention) I was going to try to post from my Ipad. I couldn't figure out how to post pictures from my ipad so the first word was as far as I got. Then my Ipad decides to keep losing wireless. UGH!! So I am back to my computer to try to finish this post.

As I was saying.....I felt like a proud parent after my face cane class that I gave to my local guild. They all did such a good job I thought I'd post some pictures. That isn't to say my other students haven't done as well, but I was just slack about taking pictures. Now a good parent would remember whose canes these are....I think one belongs to Sharon Sully and the other's Cheryl Smith. I apologize if I got this wrong and I am sure I will hear about it.

The black and white necklace picture was sent to me by Kim Koval Keane who made it after purchasing my book, Classic Clay. I thought she did a great job. She also has some Zentangle pieces that are really nice.

I am planning on going to the opening at RAM in Racine in a few weeks. Since I am the NPTIPC I knew I had to make a stupendous piece to wear. This is also so that the museum people recognize my great talent and insist on putting a piece of my work in their museum. (We can all dream can't we?!) I hope to have pictures up soon.

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A Frame is Worth a Thousand Words?

Geeesh! It's been since May 1st since I posted. I better get on the stick or I will lose the multitudes (well... the 200 plus) who follow this blog.

I have to say I have been busy at least. I took a 16 day cruise which started in Rome, went around Spain and ended in France. Had a wonderful time and actually got inspired. (not hard to do) Here is a picture of a cathedral in Florence, Italy. I was inspired by the many layers/moldings. Not sure what the architectural term is. I thought that I would give them a try for some of my mosaic faces. I like the way they turned out. It took several steps to make them.

First I had to make some canes. Now I wanted them to be detailed but I knew I was going to reduce them down so it was a challenge deciding the right amount of detail so that all the work could still be seen at the tiny size. Of course some of it is lost but I think of it like my eyeballs in my faces, I know it's there and I convince myself it adds to the cane. I have some books on renaissance designs and borrowed from there for some of the designs. I need to add to my stash of canes if I keep this up.

I made each "frame" separately so that I could sand them before putting them together. I put them together (another baking) I added canes along the sides of last frame. (another baking)

Added the back (another baking) and then sanded again.

As I said I liked the way they turned out. They are a little thick and I may try to scale them down some more.

I have to go condition some clay for a face cane class I am giving my local guild this weekend.

Until next time.

Don't Worry. We'll Fix It In Post.

As I told you in my last post I was going to work on a Pop art face cane. After I drew the sketch the look on her face made me think she had a sad look. This got me to thinking about a swap that I had signed up for. I had thought about molding an Egyptian pharaoh type face that I would put canes on, Then I thought about the 20 masks that I had to make and I decided I would make this cane. (after all I'm Julie Eakes face caner!) I decided I would call it "Mask in the City".

Well the idea was that this was going to be easier. Laugh laugh! Now I've written about the new mush that they call Kato clay. I know my students have had problems with it and I have problems with it. The white I was using was very soft. I tried leeching it but you know that doesn't do it right either. I plowed on and made the cane. You can see a picture of the cane prior to being reduced. I thought it looked OK. Alright I know what you are thinking. "what were you thinking with those color choices for the curtains"? I'll admit I was using up some clay that I had leftover and I wasn't really happy with it. It had taken me days to build it and I just wanted it finished.

The next morning I reduced the cane. Now this was a rather tall and slender cane so expected it might be a little difficult to reduce. It seemed like it was going fine. I was beating my clay on the bathroom floor. All seemed to be coming along fine.

Then I cut it open to take a look. You can see the results in the second picture. The corner had disappeared, she had a big eye and I don't know what was up with the cityscape behind her. It looked like a nuclear plant behind her. Well that would explain the mutant big eye! There is no explanation for my color choices. Before I reduce my large canes I put scrap clay on the ends. The idea is that the scrap clay would end up being the distorted part and there would be more of the "good" cane. I decided to slice into the scrap clay. You can see in the picture that the softer (mostly white clay) side of the face bulged out faster into the scrap clay. This is why she looks like a big eyed mutant monster.

So much for easy slices for my mask swap. But fear not friends there is help for this cane. Fortunately it is a stylized version of a face. (although for some reason I kept thinking of Celine Dion when I was building it. Sorry Celine!) After reduction I had about 12 - 14 inches of cane. Didn't end up with anything close to that in usable cane. I cut off about a two inch segment and pushed in the smaller eye side. This made this side bigger. You can see in the picture how I did this. I then evened up the ends. It isn't perfect solution but by doing this I removed some of the excess clay in the darker half (the side with less white and therefore stiffer clay). Now I knew that there would be more tweaking necessary of each slice. So long easy swap idea. Fortunately with my handy dandy slicer I was able to make thins slices. For each of these I put onto a backing of black clay. I could then "tweak" the cane some more. Mostly around the eyes. Once I got her looking fairly normal I baked her face down. I knew that there would be an uneven back and I wanted the face part to be as flat as possible. Again I knew that now I would have to sand each piece. UGH! (**&%#$ Kato clay)

I finally got twenty slices looking "OK" so I can continue with my swap. Since I ended up chopping off most of the cityscape I have renamed her "mask of a lonely woman". I hope my swappees are alright with it. Still have some sanding to do. UGH! (#$%^& Kato!) I just wanted to share my frustrations and my attempts at corrections with you.

Take care.