Scrap translucent clay Stroppel cane pictorial tutorial

I am putting here a pictorial tutorial for a translucent cane made out of scraps in a Stroppel cane technique.

We will need this cane for today's tutorial. I just thought of not making the video way too long, and the cane is not hard to make at all, so here it is.

Take whatever bits and pieces of various translucent you have, tinted or not. You can also mix bits and pieces of other colors with a bit of translucent. For this specific cane, try to stay in the yellow-orange-red range. Make sure you also have some bits of un-tinted translucent.

Before starting, place some paper towels on your work area and cover with waxed paper (or cling wrap if you don't have wax paper)

Chop your pieces fairly small

Once you chopped them, drop some alcohol inks over them. I used yellow, orange, maroon and a few drops of citrus green

Let them dry completely.
Once they are dry, chop them even finer and mix them well.

Take an equal amount of gold and translucent and mix them

Then run the mix through the pasta machine on thinnest setting, making an approximately rectangular sheet.

Place your chopped up pieces on the sheet, trying to cover the surface equally.

Uh! That looks like some kind of Mexican dish. I'm getting hungry!
Haha. Now cover with wax paper, and first press down a little with your fingers, then use the roller to spread the chopped pieces evenly on the gold/translucent sheet

Once you're done it should look like this:

Start coiling from one end, making sure that you don't trap air

Once you've done your spiral, squeeze it a little from the middle up, as in any other round log cane, to move out any air pockets

Then using your roller, make it into a square cane, reducing it a little in the process.

And this is how it looks. Of course, once it's baked, it will look gorgeous, when all that translucent becomes, well, translucent!

Now let it rest until we will need it, in a couple hours, for the tutorial that is coming soon on youtube.

Stroppel can pieces and working on the enamel

I am wrapping up the tutorial on the Stroppel cane pieces. Should start upload in about an hour.

I am also working on redoing the low temp enamel review and testing. Got the poppies all made and baked, will put the enamel on them. Also another prettier piece than the testing ones.

It's very rainy here, but no severe storms. So me and my best friend decided to not do our usual week-end shopping today, but try to do it tomorrow, if the rains ease up. Even if it's not cold, it's not fun at all to traipse in the rain and get wet.

Beautiful finds of the day:

OMG look at this. Glow in the dark resin with little sea creatures and koi fish made out of polymer clay. Breathtaking. I want one.

Also, take a look at this. Polymer clay + old CDs + alcohol inks. It's in German but the photos are enough to figure out the process. Gorgeous!

And this Magic Swirl cane tutorial. Most of the images have broken links but the explanation is enough to figure out what you have to do, and the finished result has a working image.

Will update this later in the day. Well, either update this or post a new post.

Canes, finished pieces and low temp enamels

I'm putting here a few short notes - I'm waiting for the medical transportation company to pick me up for my appointment with the spine specialist so I will post something more elaborate later today. I just wanted to give you a few heads up where I am right now.

I only need to finish editing the tutorial on the pieces made with the Stroppel cane. The unfortunate events of yesterday with the delays uploading the tutorial on the cane itself made my work on that be delayed as well.

I got the cane caps from tinypandora (thank you, Elizabeth!) and she sent me a bracelet kit too (I love you, Teresa!). So depending how worn out I will be after the doctors visit (and if they give me any spine shots or not) I will be working on a translucent cane tutorial either this afternoon or you'll see it tomorrow. And next week I'll do a bracelet one too with the kit.

Finally all got finalized with the low temp enamel manufacturer. I do have to re-shoot a few things on the review and testing, and I will also take the opportunity that Ludmila Bakulina has posted a video on how to make enameled-metal-looking-like poppies, I will try and see if this enamel works on doing those, so you know if you want to make the poppies, where to get the enamel, here in the US. I hope to have that up Sunday.

So, teaser for the pendants made with Stroppel cane until the tutorial gets uploaded

Today - the Stroppel canes

So today's tutorial is about the Stroppel canes. I think it's scheduled to be published at 8 am CDT

Then for tomorrow morning will be how to make two pretty pieces with these canes. Two pendants. Actually one turned in a kind of a necklace but oh well. I might even change the other one into a necklace, who knows what new ideas I get if I look at that pendant for 4 minutes haha

Anyway, I woke up close to 2 am and couldn't go back to sleep. I woke up due to noisy storm.

No this time there was no danger just lots and lots and lots of thunder. And of course Seamus got scared and I had to go and pick him up and hold him

I'm finally getting back to being sleepy,so I think I will try to sleep at least a couple more hours. I will update this later or do another post.

Until the tutorial gets published, here, feast your eyes. I think these canes came up gorgeous, and the small square one with black wrapping looks like a sur-realistic painting in miniature. I should put it up for doll house miniaturists to make decos for dollhouses out of it.

Update 7:30 pm

So lost internet connection while I was sleeping in the morning. So the video, even after it was fully downloaded got stuck in processing. So I went ahead and re-uploaded it. Now my voice got stripped from the second part of the video.

So I am uploading it for the third time.

I'm telling you, if I need to spend a month re-uploading this video over and over, I will do it. I start suspecting youtube throttling me because I got over 2k subscribers now and I'm not monetizing my channel (aka not playing any of those pesky ads that annoy everybody, and there are no ads on my video pages either).

Today's tutorial - Kalyana effect explained

So it still has about 1 hour to upload. For tomorrow, it's already uploaded and scheduled the Stroppel cane tutorial - actually both Stroppel canes with variants.
After which for Friday (I'm not done yet with it) will be two pieces made with each of the Stroppel canes (one of them with a variant)

The cane caps from TinyPandora.com are supposed to be delivered Friday, so I will do Friday afternoon the translucent "floating" Tsunami cane and a piece with it.  That will be uploaded for Saturday.

After which I will be taking a few days break - of course we will have the live event on Sunday at 2 pm CDT - but I need to catch up with stuff.

If I get the ok from the enamel manufacturer, I will upload the testing and review video too.

In the mean time, for next week:

I just got in the mail the Sculpey clear (yay!) and a few colors and samples from a not so known mica powder and glitters company. These pigments are fairly general use and the company does a lot of business in body painting, but I am sure that they will work wonders on clay - they already told me they have one other polymer clay artist who is using them. And the colors! OMG the colors they have! You will see.

Until then they sent me 2 glitter samples, one very fine and delicate and pink with iridescence, and the other one is a dream in blue - the glitter is of various sizes, but the blue is absolutely fabulous.
Pardon the quality of the photos, the new camera is not supposed to get here until the 18 so I'm still stuck with taking photos with my crappy phone.

Feast your eyes!