Rose Cane Tutorial

This is a HUGE amount of photos for one tutorial, but I really wanted to make sure you could understand every step. Hope this helps everyone figure out how to create one of these amazingly useful canes. 

What you'll need to create a rose cane:

2 X 56g block of STEADTLER fimo effect #504 translucent green

2 X 56g block of STEADTLER fimo effect #014 translucent

1 X 56g block of STEADTLER fimo effect #505 mint

1 X 56g block of STEADTLER fimo effect metallic #28 ruby red

1 X 56g block of STEADTLER fimo soft #0 white

A clay use only pasta roller is very useful in cane-making but not mandatory. You can do the job with a plexi Clay roller and a little more elbow grease.

Brand new clay cutter. 

I used the Skinner Blend to make the gradient colours in this cane.

Follow the link to see Judith Skinner talking about her very amazing technique.

I made the leaf cane first. This is how I did it.

I conditioned and rolled out a block of translucent green and a block of mint. I made a triangular sheet of each colour and put the two triangles together to form a square.

I folded and rolled the square (being careful not to turn the direction the clay was fed into the rollers or the fold direction) about nine times in all to get this smooth gradation of colour.

The Skinner blend is magic every time.

I rolled the gradient sheet up starting with the light side.

Roll tightly so you don't get air bubbles.

Now I have a cylinder that is light in the center and dark on the edge.

I sliced it straight down the middle.

I made a triangle shaped long piece of translucent green clay and put it in the middle of the two half rounds I created from the green gradient cylinder. I also shaped cylinder halves into pointed shapes that represented a leaf.

I made two half round cylinders of translucent clay and placed them on the flat sides of the leaf cane. These half rounds of translucent clay will help the leaf retain it's leafy shape.

Roll the leaf cane cylinder to make sure it's going to be a true round cylinder with flat ends.

To decrease the leaf cane. I started to gently squeeze the middle of the cane working my way to the ends of the cane. I will also gently pull a cane to elongate it as long as it's warm enough. Be gentle and slow when decreasing the size of a cane.

When the leaf cane was about 1cm thick I stopped decreasing, trimmed the ends back to use-able cane *, and set it aside.

(* When reducing cane, the ends become warped and distorted. You need to cut bits of the ends off bit by bit until you hit cane that is recognizably the shape you started with.)

The rose:

I made a Skinner Blend with metallic red on one side and white on the other to create the rose petals.

 Instead of rolling the blended sheet, I accordion folded it to create a gradient block.

I made the block as uniform as possible by pressing each side into a flat surface until it was block shaped and even.

 Then I turned the block onto it's side and rolled it to create a cylinder that was red on one side and white on the other.

I pinched the sides where the white meets the red and created a ridge all the way down the length of both sides of the cane.

The cane is no longer round. Now it's diamond shaped.

Next I reduced the thickness of the cane by gently pulling it until I had a very long strip of red on one side, white on the other. I tried to maintain most of the thickness in the center of the cane and kept the edges tapered.

Cut the cane into 6cm lengths. You should have about eight of them. Curl one edge of the first length in towards the white side. To create a cylinder that looks like the center of a rose..... or a curly loop from the end. Slightly curve each of the next pieces with the white side on the inside to create a "U" shape. These "U" shapes are the petals and will fit snugly around each other slightly overlapping the previous petals.

Try to keep things snug and eliminate as many air pockets as you can by pressing the pieces together firmly and evenly.

Add a triangular shaped worm of translucent clay to the bottom sides of a leaf cane and trim to length. The triangular worms will support the leaf and fill the dead space in the cane. Add as many leaf canes as you want.

Fill in any open space in the cane by adding worms of translucent clay until the cane is once again a cylinder.

Reduce the cane by gently squeezing from the center of the cane to the ends. Keep in mind that slow and steady is best. Don't try to rush the reducing. You'll just end up with a deformed cane. 

It doesn't look pretty while you're reducing. But don't worry the inside of the cane is beautiful.

Here is the cane reduced to about 2cm thick. I cut the cane in four to make it easier to handle. After the cane has been reduced to a decent width you can trim the pieces to a workable length and roll them on a flat surface to reduce them further.

You can make many different sizes of the same cane by simply reducing some more than others. You can add the cane slices unbaked to another sheet of unbaked clay and roll it out to use it as a covering for almost anything. Beads, boxes, books........ the possibilities are truly endless.

For my nails canes, I reduce the canes down to teeny size. Less than half a cm. Then I bake the canes in a 230 degree preheated oven for ten minutes. It's important to slice the canes when they are still hot from the oven and elastic. You can get the thinnest slices that way. I also tape the cane to my work surface to keep it steady while I slice.

Here are three of the nail cane sizes. The smallest is less than one half cm. Here is a link to a video on how I embed these canes into my acrylic nails.

I also kept and reduced some of the leaf cane to add to my nail designs.

Hope you try a cane!

They're addicting!