Adding Round Polymer Cane Slices to Round Beads
Video #643: Making canes is very fun… but when you also know how to use them in creative ways… that makes it even better.
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IN THIS POST: — round beads — cane slices — raw canes — round canes — canework — polymer canes — polymer clay canes — millefiori — flower canes — easter lily cane — flower beads — bead making — sculpey etch and pearl tool — knitting needle — polyslicer combo — clay blade — (Topics marked with an asterisk* are discussed in the Comments Section below).
- I’m going to show you how to add round polymer clay cane slices to round polymer clay beads.
- We get this question often… “I have made a polymer clay cane, and what am I supposed to do with it?”
- And we also get, “How do I add cane slices to a polymer clay beads?”
- So in this video, I am going to show you how to accomplish these things.
- I show some examples of some flower beads I made using the Vol-058 Easter Lily Cane Tutorial.
- I show examples of the Easter Lily Canes.
- When you go to add a cane to a bead, you have to think about a few things… sometimes the cane has a colored background… like the blue background on this cane.
- It is going to be important that your base beads have the same color as the background of your cane.
- That way, you don’t have to stretch the slice too far to fill the background. Stretching the cane slice can distort the image in the cane.
- If you’re using a cane with a translucent background, then this doesn’t matter as much. You will just need to make sure your base bead is a color that compliments the cane. In other words, not just scrap clay.
- You can add the cane slices in whatever size that you want, to whatever sized bead that you want. It all depends on what you want to bead to look like in the end.
- I am going to make a large bead, so you can see what I’m doing.
- Take your base bead (mine is the same blue as the background of my cane), and roll it into a round bead shape… making sure there are no creases or holes.
- Then you want to cut several thick slices from the cane you want to use.
- I like to use slices approximately 2 mm thick. This gives me more flexibility when positing and manipulating the slices on the bead.
- Also, thick 2 mm cane slices gives more depth when it comes time to sand after baking.
- Some people make the mistake of slicing their canes too thin, and then they end up sanding right through the cane slice during the finishing process.
- I used my Polyslicer Combo for slicing the cane in this video, but you can also use a regular blade as well. (ADDENDUM: Unfortunately, the company that produced the Polyslicer Combo and other 3-d Printed cutters, is no longer in business.)
- I then demonstrate how to add each cane slice to the raw base bead, manipulating the slices and the bead as necessary, to get the cane slices to fit.
- Roll the edges of the slices with a knitting needle or Sculpey Pearl and Etch Tool, to join the slices and remove the crease lines.
- Then roll the whole bead in your palm to reshape and smooth out all the remaining creases and seams.
- After all that, the bead can be pierced and baked on your bead rack.
- Side Note: Please forgive the random clicking sound in the video. It was my necklace rubbing on the mic… something that we did not notice until after the video was already filmed. I’ll make sure not to let that happen again in the future.
00:00:03 –> 00:00:08 Hi guys, its Cindy Lietz, your Polymer Clay Tutor, and today’s PcT Mini Tute, I’m gonna
00:00:08 –> 00:00:16 show you how to add round Polymer Clay cane slices to round Polymer Clay beads.
00:00:16 –> 00:00:21 Now we get this kinda question a lot of times is: ‘I’ve made a cane and what I’m supposed
00:00:21 –> 00:00:26 to do with it’, or, you know: ‘how do you add the cane slices to a bead?’
00:00:26 –> 00:00:29 So I’m gonna show you how to do that.
00:00:29 –> 00:00:35 And let me just show you some examples of some beads that were made using round cane
00:00:35 –> 00:00:42 slices, and these were made using the Easter Lily Cane from…oh I don’t know if it was
00:00:42 –> 00:00:47 last year or the year before, anyways it’s the Easter Lily Cane tutorial that I did quite
00:00:47 –> 00:00:53 some time ago, and you can see I’ve got it… the pattern, in a variety of sizes, I’ve got
00:00:53 –> 00:01:01 little tiny ones here, a little bit bigger here, and these are the actual canes themselves.
00:01:01 –> 00:01:07 And when you go to add a cane to a bead, you have to think about a few things, sometimes
00:01:07 –> 00:01:13 a cane has a colored background, like this one does, it has a Blue colored background,
00:01:13 –> 00:01:20 and it’s going to be important to make sure that your base bead is of the same color,
00:01:20 –> 00:01:26 that way, you don’t have to stretch the slice too far and distort it too much, because the
00:01:26 –> 00:01:33 background color will peek in between the parts on it… you’ll see in a second, but
00:01:33 –> 00:01:37 it’s important that you match the color of the base bead to the background of the slice
00:01:37 –> 00:01:44 bead, now if you’re using a cane that has say a translucent background, then that’s
00:01:44 –> 00:01:46 not the same sort of issue.
00:01:46 –> 00:01:52 Now, you can add the cane slices in whatever size you want, this is kind of big unless
00:01:52 –> 00:02:00 you’re using a really large bead, on a bead like this, you’d probably only get 1 or
00:02:00 –> 00:02:01 2…
00:02:01 –> 00:02:05 I mean 2 images on it, 1 on each side with a cane this size.
00:02:05 –> 00:02:09 Reduced down, you can have a few different varieties, you could have, you know a smaller
00:02:09 –> 00:02:16 number of images or if it was super tiny like this, you could have a really…quite a few
00:02:16 –> 00:02:20 on there, so it’s really up to you the size of the cane.
00:02:20 –> 00:02:24 But when you’re going to slice your cane… so let’s just make a really big one so that
00:02:24 –> 00:02:30 you can see it well, so I’m just gonna take my base clay and I’m gonna roll it into a
00:02:30 –> 00:02:34 ball, it doesn’t have to be perfect, but you really want to make sure that there aren’t
00:02:34 –> 00:02:40 any creases or holes or bubbles or weird things on it, but it doesn’t have to be a perfect
00:02:40 –> 00:02:45 shape, then what you wanna do is you wanna make a bunch of slices.
00:02:45 –> 00:02:46 Hi guys, its Cindy Lietz, your Polymer Clay Tutor, and today’s PcT Mini Tute, I’m gonna
00:02:46 –> 00:02:47 show you how to add round Polymer Clay cane slices to round Polymer Clay beads. Now we
00:02:47 –> 00:02:48 get this kinda question a lot of times is: ‘I’ve made a cane and what I’m supposed
00:02:48 –> 00:02:49 to do with it’, or, you know: ‘how do you add the cane slices to a bead?’ So I’m
00:02:49 –> 00:02:50 gonna show you how to do that. And let me just show you some examples of some beads
00:02:50 –> 00:02:51 that were made using round cane slices, and these were made using the Easter Lily Cane
00:02:51 –> 00:02:52 from…oh I don’t know if it was last year or the year before, anyways it’s the Easter
00:02:52 –> 00:02:53 Lily Cane tutorial that I did quite some time ago, and you can see I’ve got it… the pattern,
00:02:53 –> 00:02:54 in a variety of sizes, I’ve got little tiny ones here, a little bit bigger here, and these
00:02:54 –> 00:02:55 are the actual canes themselves. And when you go to add a cane to a bead, you have to
00:02:55 –> 00:02:56 think about a few things, sometimes a cane has a colored background, like this one does,
00:02:56 –> 00:02:57 it has a Blue colored background, and it’s going to be important to make sure that your
00:02:57 –> 00:02:58 base bead is of the same color, that way, you don’t have to stretch the slice too far
00:02:58 –> 00:02:59 and distort it too much, because the background color will peek in between the parts on it…
00:02:59 –> 00:03:00 you’ll see in a second, but it’s important that you match the color of the base bead
00:03:00 –> 00:03:01 to the background of the slice bead, now if you’re using a cane that has say a translucent
00:03:01 –> 00:03:02 background, then that’s not the same sort of issue. Now, you can add the cane slices
00:03:02 –> 00:03:03 in whatever size you want, this is kind of big unless you’re using a really large bead,
00:03:03 –> 00:03:04 on a bead like this, you’d probably only get 1 or 2… I mean 2 images on it, 1 on
00:03:04 –> 00:03:05 each side with a cane this size. Reduced down, you can have a few different varieties, you
00:03:05 –> 00:03:06 could have, you know a smaller number of images or if it was super tiny like this, you could
00:03:06 –> 00:03:07 have a really…quite a few on there, so it’s really up to you the size of the cane. But
00:03:07 –> 00:03:08 when you’re going to slice your cane… so let’s just make a really big one so that you
00:03:08 –> 00:03:09 can see it well, so I’m just gonna take my base clay and I’m gonna roll it into a ball,
00:03:09 –> 00:03:10 it doesn’t have to be perfect, but you really want to make sure that there aren’t any creases
00:03:10 –> 00:03:11 or holes or bubbles or weird things on it, but it doesn’t have to be a perfect shape,
00:03:11 –> 00:03:12 then what you wanna do is you wanna make a bunch of slices. Now I’m gonna use this cane
00:03:12 –> 00:03:13 here, I guess it’s about a…oh it’s about a ½ an inch in diameter, and I’m gonna use
00:03:13 –> 00:03:14 my Poly Slicer Combo…you may have seen me do a demo on this before, this is a great
00:03:14 –> 00:03:15 way to slice round canes to keep them from distorting, and I’m just gonna take a few
00:03:15 –> 00:03:16 quite thick slices of the cane. And this is where I think people make a few mistakes,
00:03:16 –> 00:03:17 if they try to go too thin…if you go too thin, then you don’t have as much room to
00:03:17 –> 00:03:24 work with it, and to stretch it around and get it to fit on your bead. Now, you could
00:03:24 –> 00:03:28 also slice it with a regular blade if you don’t have a slicer, like that, you just have
00:03:28 –> 00:03:36 to take, you know, a fairly thick slice, now, this particular slice is around…let’s
00:03:36 –> 00:03:45 see, a couple millimeters thick, anywhere between 1 and 2 millimeters thick. Now what
00:03:45 –> 00:03:50 I’m gonna do, I’m gonna do a more random pattern, you could do yours planned out, but I would
00:03:50 –> 00:03:58 like to cover this whole surface with the slices, so I’m just going to press them onto
00:03:58 –> 00:04:07 the raw clay…and this is all raw, the cane is raw, the base bead is raw, let’s turn that
00:04:07 –> 00:04:13 at a bit of an angle so it isn’t too obvious of a pattern, and I’m just going to start
00:04:13 –> 00:04:21 placing them next to each other until they fill up the bead, like that, and the thick
00:04:21 –> 00:04:30 slices are going to be able to be manipulated, okay, so see this spot here? It’s kind of
00:04:30 –> 00:04:34 too small for my slice, all I have to do is kinda just pull those away from each other
00:04:34 –> 00:04:39 a bit and it should fit right in there, and you can…that’s the cool thing about Polymer
00:04:39 –> 00:04:44 Clay is you can manipulate things a little bit, stretch it and pull it a bit, so I’ll
00:04:44 –> 00:04:54 put a few more slices on here, and you can vary up the cane slices, if you wanted to
00:04:54 –> 00:04:59 use little tiny ones in these spaces here, you could, oh that one’s a little too…oh
00:04:59 –> 00:05:04 I can’t move it now…it’s stuck on there, I didn’t want it to be so exactly the same,
00:05:04 –> 00:05:11 but that’s alright. Now I’ve got a few kinda random spots left here, what I’m going to
00:05:11 –> 00:05:16 do is… this one I think will fit okay in there, I’ll take another thick slice…I’ll
00:05:16 –> 00:05:24 just do it with my blade here, because I know most of you won’t have the PolySlicer, and
00:05:24 –> 00:05:33 I’ll just slip that into that spot, and then you can also reduce it a little bit if you
00:05:33 –> 00:05:39 wanted to, it became a little bit smaller to fit better into that one remaining… or
00:05:39 –> 00:05:47 the one spot there, make it a little bit smaller. Cane making is really fun, there’s just so
00:05:47 –> 00:05:54 many cool things you can do with it and I really love this pattern, it’s quite a fun
00:05:54 –> 00:06:01 one to make, and then now we have one space left, now depending on how the pattern works,
00:06:01 –> 00:06:06 I could try to sneak another one in here, or because the cane slices are quite thick,
00:06:06 –> 00:06:13 what I can do is manipulate it, but I think it’s too big to skip it, so I think I’ll
00:06:13 –> 00:06:19 still put one in there, just make it a little smaller, alright, so I’m making it a little
00:06:19 –> 00:06:30 smaller, and fit him in that spot there, alright. So now, what we can do is we can take a round
00:06:30 –> 00:06:38 tool like a knitting needle or this is one of the Sculpey Pearl and Etch tools, it’s
00:06:38 –> 00:06:44 quite handy, and you just wanna roll over the seams and get those corners to mesh up
00:06:44 –> 00:06:52 with each other, and what will happen is you’ll end up sealing that right in, but should there
00:06:52 –> 00:07:02 be any areas that are too large to stretch into those spots, then your background color
00:07:02 –> 00:07:08 will disguise that, so I’m just gonna keep rolling over these little areas, back and
00:07:08 –> 00:07:17 forth until I have it sealed up here pretty good and then I’m gonna roll it in my hands,
00:07:17 –> 00:07:24 alright. In another video sometime, I’ll have to show you how you can add square canes to
00:07:24 –> 00:07:29 round beads, there’s a neat little trick for that too, alright, so we’ve got this, we’re
00:07:29 –> 00:07:36 getting it put together, almost done. If there’s a large spot…this one isn’t that bad and
00:07:36 –> 00:07:40 because the background is the same, it’s not a big deal, but I’m gonna show you this neat
00:07:40 –> 00:07:47 trick, you can take that background spot, and you can take something sharp and just
00:07:47 –> 00:07:52 push that down, and what will happen is, is you’ll be able to roll your edges right in
00:07:52 –> 00:07:57 and close that right up. So say you did have a background that didn’t match very well,
00:07:57 –> 00:08:01 then you could… or too large of a gap, you can press into that spot like that, and it
00:08:01 –> 00:08:06 will close it right up. Alright, so let’s roll this in our hands to get rid of all those
00:08:06 –> 00:08:14 little seams on there, so you’ve got to press quite hard, and I keep my bottom hand
00:08:14 –> 00:08:19 flat when rolling beads and my top one, I go back and forth and keep switching direction,
00:08:19 –> 00:08:29 I keep the roll pretty small so that I don’t distort the bead too much, alright…and it’ll
00:08:29 –> 00:08:34 keep it quite round, I’m almost there, there still is a few little lines from where the
00:08:34 –> 00:08:42 edges of the canes were, and you wanna make sure to get rid of those, because it will
00:08:42 –> 00:08:48 be flawless if you can get rid of those, so I’ll just quickly do that. I’m almost there,
00:08:48 –> 00:08:53 I think I’d better wrap this up, but I think you get the idea, but look at that, see now
00:08:53 –> 00:09:00 we have canes all over this bead, they’re all matching, the background looks beautiful,
00:09:00 –> 00:09:05 and all you’d need to do is pierce it and bake it on your baking rack. Alright, so I
00:09:05 –> 00:09:14 hope that was helpful for you, if it was, let us know. And if you have questions about
00:09:14 –> 00:09:19 Polymer Clay or products you’d like me to test, chances are we’ve already done a video
00:09:19 –> 00:09:25 on it, and if we haven’t you can just make a suggestion in the comment section below,
00:09:25 –> 00:09:30 and we’ll try to make a video for you on that. Alright, so we’ll see you next time and bye
00:09:30 –> 00:09:30 for now.
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Resource Links:
- Related Video: Easter Lily Cane Vol-058 Polymer Clay Tutorial
- Related Video: Rolling Round Polymer Clay Beads By Hand
- Related Video: Polyslicer Combo Tool For Slicing Polymer Clay Canes
- Related Video: How To Make Same Sized and Graduated Round Beads
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This video was super helpful! When I started caning, I made a bunch of flower canes but was never satisfied with how the beads I made using the slices. This will really help. Most of my canes have a translucent background, but I’m going to try this technique with that too.
Thanks for the really good tips! It is amazing that you can learn so much from a small tip!. That is what separates You ( & Doug) from all the rest…………….
teaching – Lordy do I miss the edit function, lol
Amazing! You keep teach this old dog new tricks! ROFL!