Signature Cane

The main demonstration at the London Polymer Clay Group was by on making signature canes Susan Rimmer, thanks Susan it was an interesting demonstration.

 I have been thinking about signing my work and did play about with a stamp made from bent bits of coke can back in the autumn but I wasn't happy with the results, it wasn't obviously a signature and I mainly sanded it out the few times I tried it. Off course the first one I made was back to front because I forgot it was going to be a stamp image and didn't reverse the letters.

So here's the cane I made after Susan showed us how she made a 2011 date cane (wonder if she'll use it?)

Before reduction 4.5 cm across (See that green smear at top - must remember to  clean my blade!)

The smallest is 5mm across (I see I didn't trim the second smallest back to the neat part and they could be more square!)

I thought I would like to incorporate the flower I use on my logo (shown below in case you haven't seen it already)

I was thinking about adding a flower on to the outside of the cane I already had when I was struck by inspiration - why not put it in the loop of the J?  I had kept part of the original cane large (4.5cm across, I got carried away!) so I did some surgery. I didn't want to cut the letters because I was worried about not rejoining accurately so it was a little tricky. I had to make the flower smaller than I would of done as I couldn't get in to trim out the clay easily.

The flower is in pearl but I decided that would help it stand out a little. I quite liked it this size. 

I had noticed that my J lost some of it's curve on the bottom loop on reduction with the previous cane so I thought I might try and encourage it to stay round with a little extra clay - 2 little sausages on the bottom as shown below.

Here it is reduced, my cunning little snakes didn't work, seems obvious now on hindsight what would happen but you've got to make these mistakes - it's learning you know! The little snakes compressed the black line of the J making it look broken. The flower is also quite tiny and the pearl when squished down looks darker.

I want to add a border but am not quite sure what. I wondered about using a zebra cane....

..but I think it's probably too fussy. Might work better thinner maybe? I will have to play about with it a bit. Am I going to use it? Well really I would like to remake another one with a bigger, white flower in the J as I construct it but I have lots of other things on my to do list that are more important. I am preparing for a small sale in just under 2 weeks time so perhaps I will put some on my new stock just to see how they look. I'll let you know.