The striped bead tutorial shows how to make a cane out of a polymer clay stack and make them into flattened oval shaped beads. It also shows how to put a colour trim around bead.

Materials

• 5 different clay colours

Equipment

• Tissue blade
• Flat shiny working area (piece of glass or a tile)
• Needle
• Wet/dry high grit sandpaper
• Polishing tool
• Oven

Method

Roll out the different colours of clay. In this case I wanted to make large beads so I rolled each colour on the thickest setting of my pasta machine. [Image 1.]

Stack the sheets in the order you want them. [Image 2]. Cut it to size. I cut the stack 2.5cm (1") wide. Round the top edge of the stack you just cut. [Image 3.] Be careful apply consistent pressure all the way down the stack. Otherwise some of your beads will be deformed.

Turn the stack around to round the other side as well.  

We basically have a cane now that is ready to be sliced into beads. I want to give my beads a black border. So put the cane on the black sheet and measure that circumference of your cane. [Image 4.]

Right. Now roll the cane in your hands ensuring that you do not distort the cane.

If you are happy that it is rolled tightly we are ready to cut the beads. [Image 5.]

I want my beads to be about half a centimeter thick. Turn the cane upright, and strart slicing at half centimeter intervals. You can put the cane in the freezer for 10 minutes at this point. The warmer the clay is the easier it distorts. 

Cut the cane. It also helps to cut the beads with a rolling action to prevent distortion.

So just a quick reminder on how this works. The height of the stack corresponds to the height of the bead, the width to the width of the bead and the distance you make the slices is the depth. For this reason try and be as accurate as possible when you slice the cane.

Image 6 shows the sliced beads from the top and image 7 shows how it looks from the side.

When I made the beads for this tutorial I drilled the holes after I baked the beads. I would strongly suggest you make the holes first. Because of the shape of these beads I found it very difficult to drill them and ended up ruining quite a few as well breaking a drill bit. 

After you make the holes place the beads on a glass sheet or tile for baking. Space them out so that you can still work with them. Use your fingers to make the shapes even and smooth out any finger marks by gently stroking the clay. I wanted slighly rounded edge so I removed some of the clay at the top and bottom of the bead on both sides and smoothed it with my fingers. 

Move the your tissue blade under the bead to scoop them up and turn them around so that you can smooth the other side. Pop them in the oven and cook them according to the manufacturers instructions to harden the beads.

You could just varnish the beads, but I like the stone like texture you get when you sand and polish beads. So I sanded them with sandpaper 400grit, 600grit, 800grit. Then polished them with my dremel. 

Image 8 shows how the finished bead looks after the beads were strung into a necklace.