Get Started With Polymer Clay: Bullseye Canes

1. Introduction: Hi, my name's Cara Jain Hayman, and I'm a polymer clay artists and tutor from the UK. I've been working with polymer clay since I was a small child. So quite a few years. I've been teaching polymer clay from beginners to advanced level, but in the UK and around the world for the last nine years. And I'm really excited to be up share my scales now on skill share too. I loved making Keynes from polymer clay. They like sticks of rock with a pattern that goes through from one side all the way three. You can take slices of this and use it to make some really beautiful jewelry and unique gifts. Best thing about polymer clay, as you can make these patterns quite big. And then you can reduce them. And it still feels like magic to me every time my cousin side and my pattern has gone from big, small, I take great pride in finishing my work TO professional standard. And I will help you get started on the right track so you can make yourself some quality January or gifts to polymer clay is a great creative hobby. It's so versatile and you can do many things with it. You can make jewelry, decorative objects. You can also make miniatures or sculptures or card topples. You name it. You can probably make it with polymer clay. You don't need a lot of tools to get started. There are plenty of tools available if you want to buy more, but really a few simple tools will be all you need to get started with this exciting hobby. This class will cover all the basics you need to know to get started making polymer clay Keynes, I'll talk to you about the tools and materials you need. And I'll give you some advice about what I particularly like and find useful. I'm going to show you how to make a bull's eye cane. And you can choose to make it in rainbow colors or whatever colors you like. I'll take you step-by-step through the process and at the end, you'll have a cane you can use to make many interesting objects. 2. Polymer Clay Tools: You need something to work on. Something that's smooth and won't be damaged by a knife. A ceramic tile is perfect. A nice smooth white glazed tile is great for working on. And you can put it in the oven, which means you don't need to lift up delicate projects. Another good surface is a smooth glass chopping board. If you get a plain one, you can put a picture underneath it or a grid. Let's have a look at rolling tools. What you may have at home already, a straight sided glass and a pack of playing cards. A good starting tool is an acrylic roller. And my favorite, the pastor machine. Whatever you're using to roll, you can use spaces to help you get a sheet of even thickness. Here I'm using playing cards. I use the same number on each side, and if I want a thinner sheet, I simply remove some. You can also use magazines or you can buy spacers for this job. It's even easier with the pasta machine. This atlas pasta machine has nine settings from 0 down to nine, with nine being the thinnest. As you can see, I'm passing the sheet through the pasta machine and each time it comes out and I smooth even sheet, I'm moving down through the settings and the sheet is getting thinner. Cutting tools, a scalpel or craft knife is useful for cutting out shapes and for trimming the edges. You will need something longer for cutting sheets and for cutting canes. And easily available tool is a snap off blade or floor scraping blades, which are available from DIY Store's. You can make your own polymer handle, like I've done here. I've made the handle so the blade sits up, so you never pick it up the wrong way up. There are a wide range of special blades sold for using with polymer clay. You can buy these from good craft stores or online specialists, polymer clay retailers. They're thin, they're sharp, and they're long, and they're great for a range of polymer clay jobs. You can buy rigid blades and flexible blades, and both have their uses. Tools for smoothing. Your fingers are always handy. Smooth cylindrical tools such as a brush handle, a smooth pencil, or narrow acrylic rod. My favorite is a double-ended knitting needle. The one shown as a six millimeter cable needle. It's made from aluminum. I find metal tools smooth, especially well. In the resources section of this class, you will find a sheet which you can download that tells you where you can buy polymer clay tools around the world. And also a file called Getting Started with polymer clay that's got some suggestions for cheap and easy tools. Now, let's get on with the class. 3. Conditioning Clay: When polymer clay has sat for a while, it can become stiff and crumbly and difficult to work with. So the first thing we'll do is condition the clay to make sure it's easy to work with. So it won't crack or crumble while we're working. To do this by hand, you can simply cut a slice from a block of clay. I like to roll up on the board first with my acrylic roller, but it is quite soft. You can start squishing it and squashing it and your hands straight away. I roll it on the board. Now I am scrunching it up. I'm rolling into sausage, and then a ball manipulating the clay and waking it up which means when I come to work with it, I can fold a sheet and it won't crack. If it's still cracking, it means it's not conditioned yet. It's not ready to work with. You can roll it on the board or roll it and squash it in your hands. The heat from your hands will help this process. When it's starting to feel smooth and flexible. You can check to see if it's ready. You can roll it into a ball, a nice smooth ball to start with, and simply squash it between your finger and thumb. If it doesn't crack your clay is conditioned and ready to use. You can also check by rolling it, rolling out a sheet and folding it. If it doesn't crack as you fold it, it's ready to work. If you've got a pasta machine, you can condition your clay with a pasta machine too to I like to roll my clay on the board first with an acrylic roller. I'm starting with the thickest setting and then I'm working through to a middle setting without bending the clay. At this point should start to be flexible if it wasn't already and I can now fold it. Notice how I'm putting the fold into the rollers. This will help to avoid any air getting trapped in your clay. I'm not folding it exactly in half each time. This way the ragged edges get folded in and your clay will become neater. I'm turning the cliay as I work. This will mean each edge will get neater. I find it much quicker to condition with the pasta machine and it's much easier on my hands. When the clay feels flexible and smooth and I can fold a sheet without cracking, it's ready to work. It's conditioned. Conditioning tips. If you're using the past to machine, don't forget to put the fold into the rollers to avoid trapping any air. Trapped there can become air bubbles and that's not good in your clay. If you're going to mix colors, don't condition the clay first. So take the colors that you're going to use in your mix. And as you mix them together, you'll be working on manipulating the clay. And you should find it's flexible and ready to work at the end, remember, conditioning is just making your clay workable. Some clay will be soft and workable already. And won't need much conditioning. Okay, get your clay conditioned, ready for the next lesson, where we'll roll out the sheets for the cane. 4. Getting ready : Bulls-eye canes are all about layers. To make the layers we will work with sheets of clay. You can keep the layers the same as in these two canes. Or you can vary the thickness of the layers by using thicker and thinner sheets. The dark blue is thinner than the turquoise layer. It's totally up to you how you want to make your bulls-eye cane. You can roll out your sheets of clay by hand using a roller and some spacers. Here I'm using about seven cards, which is going to give me quite a thick layer. I want a thinner layer. I'll use less cards. I just want to make sure that my strips are going to be wide enough for my cane my canes going to be about four centimeters wide. So anything more than four centimeters will be fine. So I've taken the clay I've already conditioned and I'm rolling it through my pasta machine, because I want them all the same I'm leaving the setting the same. This is a my thickest setting so my layers will be quite thick. Here. The clay, I decided it was too wide, so I folded it in half, turned it round and rolled it through again. Say I want them all to be at least four centimeters wide and the length I'm not going to worry about. I'll measure that as I go. Again, it's too short and wide and fold it in half. Rotate it by 90 degrees, and then I can put it through the pasta machines, make a longer thinner sheet. You don't need to get your sheets ready all in advance. I've done this so that the next video will be quicker. Now let's build this bulls-eye cane! 5. Making a Bullseye Cane: Let's make a bullseye cane. I've got sheets of clay prepared in rainbow colors. I'm gonna start with purple in the center. I've cut one end straight and folded the clay over. And I'm rolling up as tight as I can, try to make sure there's no air inside. I am going to cut it at a slight angle. This will make it easier to smooth over the join. I'm smoothing over the join with my thumb, dragging the clay from the high side to the low side. You can smooth it over in your hands. Or I prefer to work on the board. I'm rolling it to smooth it. I'm casting it to length. Cutting it to about four centimeters long. The diameter is a bit under a centimeter. How to make a neat join when wrapping a log of clay. Start with q strip, the same width as the lock you wish to cover. Cut one end straight and place the log on top, wrap the strip around until it meets the clay underneath. If you press it down slightly, it will leave a mark. Then unwrap the clay a little and you'll see the mark. 00:01:19.970 --> 00:01:21.575 If you cut on this mark, if your wrap is fairly thin, If your wrap is very thick, you may need to cut on the inside of this mock. Then you can roll the clay back around and the enda should meet perfectly. If they don't and the clay is a bit too long, just roll it back and trim it back again. If it's a bit short, you can normally gently stretch the clay so that it will meet. So let's look at making this neat join. In real life. I've got my strip of clay. The top end is already straight cutting the sides to be the same width as the log. I find it easiest to do this by putting the log on top of it. I'm using a tissue blade to cut down. (Not very well, it seems.) So now I'm wrapping the clay around, making sure it's on the clay firmly and pressing it down there and you can't really quite see the mark, but I'm indicating with my blade and I'm cutting on the line when I pick it up. (ta da) the ends meets beautifully? Now I'm going to smooth over. I'm going to use a double-ended knitting needle. Metal tools smooth quite well. And my thumbs smooth well too. Paying particular attention to the ends there, making sure they're joined as well. Make sure that the seam is neat, and a quick roll on the board just to even up. Then I'll do the same with the next color. Again, cuts in the end straight. Trimming the strip down to be the same width as the log. And then I'm tightly rolling the clay around the log making the mark. Again, I'm cutting on the line, getting my blade in place and then straightening up. I want to straight cut this time because the two edges should meet. Again. I'm gonna smooth it with my smoothing tool or my fingers, whichever you find easiest. I tend to use a combination of both. The ends can be a bit more tricky. So take your time with those. And I'll do the same with the next color. I'm going to speed things up a bit, save you watching it all in real time. So you can see how I do the next couple of layers. And then I've got a few more tips to come back to a bit later on. So I've made them OK, so I know where to cut to make the neat join. I'm smoothing over the seams. I'm coming with the next sheet. Now as the cane gets bigger, it's a good idea to check that your sheet is going to be long enough to wrap all the way round before you start cutting it. Again, I'm making my mark and I didn't cut quite straight, which means one end is going to overlap. Say. So I'm just going to roll the clay back a little bit and trim off the bit where it's not cut straight. So if your cut is too long, you can do the same. Just roll it back and recut it. And now joins neatly again. So my last layer, my red, again, I'm going to check that it's long enough first, making my mark where to cut. So this time I cut it a tiny bit short on purpose. So you can see how to fix that. It's only a tiny bit short, but it's not going to meet neatly. So I'm just going to gently stretch the clay with my thumbs up so that it will join. If it was really short, you could cut a strip to join in, but generally a small gap you can stretch. Just gonna give it a role on the board to round it all off. And that is my finished bull's eye rainbow. Ta da! 6. Class Project: You've seen me make a rainbow bulls-eye Kane, from start to finish. Now it's your turn to make harangue cane. You can choose whatever colors you like, whether it's rain bio, or otherwise. Why didn't you choose your favorite team colors or colors to match favorite outfit? Ready make your Kanye around. When you've made your cane, upload a picture to the project gallery. Let's see how many different color combinations we can fit our map gallery. I'd love to say that you've had a go at reducing your cane. So you've got some different sizes to work with. You can take a picture of all the sizes together. If you've got a question posted in the discussion board, and I'll do my best to try and help. 7. Bonus lesson: Making rainbows: Here's a bonus lesson, has taken cocaine and turn it into a rainbow. Again, to cut a slice of my rainbow bullseye Caine, I'm cutting quite a thick slice. As I put the cane on the paper, I realize it's not perfectly round. So I adjust it with my fingers, gently pushing where it needs to make it more round. And I'm aligning it with the center of the circle guide. You can get one from the resources section of this class. I'm lining up my blade carefully with a line across the middle and then cutting down. Now I have two semi-circles. Tell them into rainbows. I'm going to use a small cutter to cut out the center part. I can just gently just the edge of it, needs it with my fingers as my rainbow. If you want to make a hole through it to hang, it'll turn into a bead using needle TO I'm starting from the center and I'm twisting the needle as I go to reduce the amount of drag, to reduce the distortion where the needle is in the clay. And working from either end, which means both ends will push in rather than one side pushing in and the other side of clubbing pushed out. Working from side to side just to make sure I've got a good Hall. If I want to use a thinner piece, takes thin slice. Again, I'm holding the blade either side of the cane rather than at the ends. It will distort more because there's less clay, which means it can't hold its shape so well. So I'm going to reshape it with my fingers to make it round. Again. I'm using the circle guide. I'm placing it down, checking the shape, learning it in the center. And then I'll take my blade line up at the central line and cut it in half. Again, I'm going to cut out the middle with a small cutter. And this time when I wake a whole, I can't go through the middle of it because it's too thin. So instead, I'm going to make a hole from front to back. If I want to hang it, I can use a jump pouring through that hole. Or I could just tie a loop of string. Works exactly the same for smaller Keynes. When you've reduced them. Again, use the guide to send to the circle on the pattern and cut through the line. Because the cane is smaller, I'm going to use a smaller cutters cutout the center. You can make your rainbows whatever size you like. What will you do with yours? 8. Final thoughts: Well done for completing this polymer clay bull's eye cane Scotia class. We've covered the tools you need to get started. How to make a bulls-eye Cain, maybe you've had a go at the bonus class and made some rainbows to, I hope you've enjoyed it and I hope that you've learned a lot. I'm really looking forward to seeing the canes you've made. So please do share a picture of them in the project gallery. My next skill share class. I'll show you how you can use these canes to make some really cool jewelry. So don't forget to follow man Skill Share. So you can be notified when my new classes uploaded. If you share your photos on social media, please tag me so I can see how you get on. And be really grateful if you could take the time to labor review. You'll help me learn what you like and don't like about my class so I can make future classes even better and look forward to seeing you again soon. I hope in the meantime you have fun making canes with polymer clay. See you soon.