| QUOTE: ... i got instructions on how to make canes but i couldn't seem to get it. there was something about making sure that the colors don't twist when rolling them together but mine always twisted. maybe i was doing it wrong...is there any technique or do i just have to practice? |
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I'm assuming what you read had to do with rolling canes to "reduce" them (make the image smaller). Not twisting will definitely be more important with some canes than others! (e.g., face canes). Simpler canes like bullseyes or spirals, etc., won't matter at all.
There are ways though to reduce canes which help avoid twisting as well as other distortions.
Once the cane components have been pressed together, they can be briefly rolled ...just enough to eliminate all the seams on the outside.
While doing this, don't press too hard, and don't press too unevenly (the idea is to
keep moving your hands while rolling, or use a
flatter part of your hand and possibly longer strokes to avoid reducing some areas more than others). Flipping the cane so your dominant hand changes sides is advisable too. You can even roll the cane
with a sheet of glass or acrylic to get a really even cane (picture frames usually have good sizes of glass/acrylic in them).
Then to actually reduce the cane,
pulling on it or
stroking it is better than rolling it when you want to keep distortion to a minimum. (the cane may not respond as much in the beginning of this process as it will a little later because parts of it (especially center parts) may be "cooler" than the outside parts, which have had friction from handling and may have been added last.)
If you have a
round cane, just begin giving it small pulls, trying to keep the diameter the same all along the length ...you can roll it a little bit to even out the cane when necessary.
If you have a
square cane, you can stroke it with your finger and/or use a brayer or rod of some kind in one hand. Try to keep the cane an even size (the ends will want to stay larger though). Turning the square cane to its next side and also flipping it end to end as you do this will help... going slow always helps in this process, especially till you learn what's happening with the cane.
There's lots more general info on cane making on this page, if you're interested:
http://www.glassattic.com/polymer/Canes--general.htm
| QUOTE: reason i chose (Sculpey) is because i liked the colors! hehe |
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Yeah, Sculpey III has some good pre-mixed colors, but you can get practically any palette of colors you want by mixing your own colors too!
If you want to be able to mix really true, bright colors (in addition to toned-down colors, tints, or shades), you'll generally be better to avoid FimoClassic. Otherwise, choose any brand of clay you want.
You'll be really surprised at how many hundreds of colors you can mix even starting with just a few colors. Plus you can mix the "special colors" (like metallic clays, translucent, "stone" colors, etc.) with themselves or into regular clay colors as well for hundreds more.
There are also "tricks" to getting some kinds of polymer colors (like some of the the Sculpey III equivalents). For example, using "magenta" clay to mix with will usually give a brighter, truer color than using "red" (...in fact, the "clearest, truest" palette will come from using magenta, turquoise, and lemon yellow rather than an ordinary red, blue and yellow).
There's loads of info on how to mix all kinds of colors of polymer clay (including the metallics, special palettes like Desert, Sherbets, etc.) on this page of my site:
http://www.glassattic.com/polymer/color.htm
Mixing colors is so much fun that it can keep you busy for quite awhile all by itself (... if you bake your results and mark them with the colors you used, you'll have a fabulous bunch of samples to use later ...and a much better understanding of mixing polymer colors --for free [:D].)
HTH,