Paisley Cane Project part 2 - reduction

So after I tried the playdough reduction method again  more or less sucessfully last night I decided to use that way to reduce the big Paisley cane (see a video of the technique developed and kindly shared by Idit Zoota  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ecS_Sa0KbM, also Zuleykha demonstrates how to use it on her blog.There are also pdf instructions available at  http://www.artbyyonat.polyclayplay.com/ but I can't get onto the site today for some reason.). I have never made a cane this big before and Kato is so stiff the thought of reducing it was scary! I weighed the cane and it was 1lb in weight, that's a lot of clay!

So I covered it in a medium thickness sheet of Playdough and then realised just how much scrap clay I would need! I have only been working with Kato for a few weeks so don't have much scrap yet and my fimo scrap is so much softer than the kato I didn't think it would work very well. Nothing for it but to use good clay :( I figured it would be OK I could wash the playdough off after. Still didn't have quite enough of one colour so added a second layer of playdough too - risky!

 Here it is ready to start reduction

So I have never made a cane this big before, only made a non round cane once before and it's Kato and I started making it several days ago - I was worried!

I started of by giving it a whack, I needed to get the clay in the middle moving. After a bit of whacking I tried a bit of pinching and squeezing. This was no mean feat! Slowly but surely it started to shrink in diameter and grow in length.

Here is it part way through the reduction process

I kept on squeezing and pinching and pulling until the outer layer of yellow clay started to crack up and I was worried about ruining my good clay I was using to wrap with. The cane was about 2cm across at this stage and I wanted it down to 1cm (those cake fork handles I am covering are narrow). I thought I would unwrap it, soak the playdough off and then rewrap it and continue. Then the impatient me decided that the clay was moving and if I did that it would be all stiff again. By now it was long so it would be difficult to store and handle. I didn't want to cut it too much as I would get more waste at the ends every time I cut it before finishing reduction.  I carefully continued reducing without packing and managed to keep the shape fairly intact. I did have to slightly pinch the tip when I had finished but that was OK .

(Has anyone tried this technique with Kato clay? Do you get cracking? Is it my cane is too big? I will investigate with some smaller canes and will let you know how it is.)

This is the useable cane I ended up with (and also a pile of scrap from the ends)

I decided to keep some larger bits of cane in case I wanted to do something else with it . I have way more cane than I will need for the project. I had tried to estimate how much I would need to cover the handles but my calculations were somewhat off. I will go back and look at how I worked it out and see if I can be a bit more accurate next time.

 Finished canes (although they haven't been cleaned of playdough yet)

So I can see that I should off put some more larger bolder designs inside the paisley pattern. I wish I had put 2 or 3 flowers and leaves in and not bothered about the little swirly bits. I knew they would get lost in the reduction but I didn't think about the fact the background would look so purple.

Time to get on with covering these handles - I need them in the post by Monday!

Paisley Cane Project

So for the first time ever I have sat down and properly planned a polymer clay project, normally I have a rough idea and just sit down with my clay or pick a tutorial to follow. I wanted to make a set of decorated handle cake forks for my sister in law. She is married to an Indian and has her dining room decorated in an Indian theme and she has recently returned from a holiday to India so I decided to make them based on an Indian theme.

I browsed some images on the internet and collected together some of my favourite and looked at the colours. I liked the bright colours and  settle on a palette to use in my project and even made a contrast table (as suggested in Color Inspiration).

Here are the colours I chose, all custom mixes (chosen from my colour tasting tiles held up against the images I printed) with the exception of the yellow which is straight from the packet. There is a recipe on the back for each colour. This is Kato clay by the way.



I then designed the clay 'fabric' I would make to cover the handles. I decided on a Paisley cane and even did a sketch. I tried to work out roughly how much I would need to make a cane the right size. It would be terrible to run out! I will also use the components from the paisley scattered amongst it, the leaf and the flower.

I started by making a flower cane, I backed it with purple as that will be the base colour of the fabric.

I then started using my drawing to  make the cane (I have always just made it up or followed a tutorial before)

 

I had meant to make the centre of the Paisley a different colour, possibly white. I meant to make the petal cane and then construct 2 different flowers with different backing  but I forgot and only made one flower cane and that was backed with purple - so purple it was... 

Packing in place for main part of cane. It is going to be reduced pretty small to fit on the fork handles so thought the black outline would help. Probably some of these shapes are too small.

   It was a close call with the orange. I ran out of red Kato so couldn't mix any more. Luckily  by using skinner blend logs I had enough. More red ordered and should be here by the weekend!

The cane ready for reduction. But how should I reduce it? I am off to experiment with the different techniques and will report back.