Complex caning or millifiori - red flower
I’ve always been enthralled with millifiori beads and when I looked at them I considered it some sort of crafty magic. When I started making polymer clay jewellery I immediately jumped onto the complex cane tutorials and tried to do something similar. To say the least, my first attempt was a dismal failure. Actually, come to think of it, so was the second, third... hmmm... let’s just say a few. At some point though, I found the technique and have been making IMHO some really pretty beads. So this tutorial is to share the knowledge I’ve gained.
Materials
- White clay (approximately 3 - 4 56g blocks)
- 3 Red block - I used Indian red
- 1 Brown block - I used chocolate brown
Tools and equipment
- Glass or ceramic work surface
- Additional glass sheet to roll the cane
- Oven for baking clay (or an ovenproof bowl dedicated for polymer clay covered with kitchen foil if you use your oven)
- Stiff blade
- Flexible blade
- Two objects of the same height - approximately 4 cm to ensure that you’re rolled out clay is of an even height. I use a bracelet blank.
- Acrylic rod or other object to roll the clay
- Sharp object - like a darning needle - to make holes and to scratch the design on the surface
Hints and tips
- Use bought (i.e. unmixed) colour for the surround of your design. It is easy to misjudge the amount you’ll need and a lot of the time my mixes are not accurate enough to blend properly. The slices from the complex canes are used for making other pieces of jewellery. Another reason why having the same colour is important.
- Don’t make the sheets you use in your design too thin. I generally use the thickest setting on my pasta machine for sheets because when you reduce the cane the lines will become thinner.
- In the slices a dot is a log. A line is a sheet.
- Put your canes in the freezer for a while to prevent distorting.
- Use stiff clays. It is very difficult getting good results with soft clay.
- Use a stiff blade when cutting slices.
Method
There are different ways of making a complex cane. Articles show how you to use logs to make millifiori beads. I find this technique very difficult. Instead I cut out my design from a block of clay and reduce it from there.
Condition your clay. Image 1 shows the conditioned colours I used for this project.
We’ll start working on the focus point of the design, the red flower. Make a ball with the clay and roll it to be an even height. Place the clay between two objects or in the bracelet blank and roll to an even height. Place the cut out design on top of the clay. Image 2.
You can design your flower in a graphics program or free draw it. If you like to use the same design I have you can download the pdf with the image.
Scratch the outlines of the flower onto the clay with a sharp object. Use your flexible blade to cut the shape out. Image 3.
Take care to cut uniformly. The design has to look the same from top to bottom otherwise the cane will not look the same throughout. If you cannot quite figure out how to cut the shape out remember that you cut through the clay and place the pieces together again in the reduction phase. You can also use your blade or a mandrel to form the clay for the petals when you add detail.
When you have the flower shape cut out we can move onto the next step - adding the white centre of the flower. Cut through the middle of the design. See image 4.
You have the four petals of the flower now. Roll a log with the white clay. Form the inner part of each petal around a mandrel to make space for the centre of the flower. Image 5.
Cut a length of the white log to be the same as the height of your flower. Place the white log in the middle of the petals. Image 6.
Image 7 shows the top view of the flower as it should be at this point.
Roll out a sheet of brown clay on the thickest setting of your pasta machine. Cut the sheet to the same height as your flower. Wrap the sheet around the flower. Image 8. Remember, when you reduce the cane the detail will show up.
Use your blade or other things around your work area to add curves to the design. Make sure that the indentations are uniform through the height of the cane.
Image 9 shows the wrapped flower.
The next step is to add the surround to your design. There are many ways you can do this but I prefer rolling the clay to the same height as the rest of my design in my bracelet blank [image 10] and just cutting bits from it to fill the design.
Image 11 shows my progress in adding the white clay. Remember to push the white clay into the curves of the design because this is where the detail will show.
I rolled a sheet of white clay out to put around the design because I wanted a lot of white space around it. Image 12 shows how the cane should look before you reduce it.
It is a bit difficult to show the steps of reducing a cane in photographs. I will try and do another tutorial at some point with some hints and tips on this process. For now I include a description.
Use both your hands to pinch the design together. Because we start with quite a bit circle it is easy to hold it in both hands. Carry on pinching the clay in this way keeping its round shape. At some point you will be able to roll the clay between your hands. Roll the clay. The top and bottom of the large log will start deforming. You can push the top and bottom of the log onto your glass sheet to keep it even.
When the cane is getting too long to easily manage with your hands you can start rolling it between glass sheets.
Image 13 shows the side view of the reduced cane. Image 14 shows the cane after the distorted edges are cut off.
This is the point where most tutorials stop explaining what to do next. But it took me a long time to figure out how to make non-distorted round beads with a millifiori cane, so I want to show you that too.
Put the cane into the freezer for a while to make it easier to cut.
Cut the cane to make beads. I cut my cane into 9 pieces each measuring 1.5 cm to make a necklace. Image 15. Don’t cut the whole cane. When I make a complex cane like this one I use it for a batch of jewellery.
In order to make round beads you have to shave off the edges of the bead so that the design does not distort. In retrospect, this is really obvious, but it took me ages to figure this out.
Take a cut-out from the cane and place it on your sheet. Use your blade to cut off the some of the white clay on the bead and to reveal your design within. Take your blade at an angle and cut down from about a third of the bottom of the bead. Repeat around the cane until the bottom of the design is revealed.
Image 16 shows the bead after I shaved off the clay.
Turn the bead around and do the other end as well. Image 17 shows how it should look at this point. I took the photo at this angle to show you how I cut it. Image 18 shows the side view.
I think it might be useful to do a tutorial to show the exact steps. I will put it on my list. For now I hope the images show how to do this. Drop me a mail if you have any questions.
You can now roll the bead. Image 19. Repeat with the rest of the beads.
Image 20 shows the beads after they’ve been baked and polished.
Viola!
Submitted by jacqueline.fouche on Tue, 01/26/2010 - 14:14
Technique - quick links
Polymer clay
