Linda's Magic Workshop - Linda Britt Design

One evening while I was on Facebook, I came across a 2 part tutorial by  https://www.facebook.com/Amatistart62/   It shows making an Ikat pattern using old canes and I was hooked!  Following is a pictorial with some explanation of the process I used after watching her video.  It's a great video worth watching.  Many of us have old canes that we aren't sure what to do with but don't want to toss them or smash them up for scrap.  I found this to be a very interesting way to use them.  These are the two canes I decided to use.   I flattened the brown flower cane after conditioning by squeezing it Then I ran it through the pasta machine and the colors stretched into stripes. The colors are blended by folding the clay color to color and running it through the pasta machine You can see the subtle pattern.  Thin slices are cut and placed against each other on a black ground. It is important to use the end cuts next to each other and to shift the patt

My polymer interpretation of a piece of fabric A piece of fabric caught my eye in a fabric store and became the inspiration for my current project.  I started out wanting to make a lot of polymer canes (sticks of polymer with a design running through them) in colors that would go together but not match and would make me happy.  I also wanted to use up my Sculpey polymer clay that was getting old.  I used all the colors I had left and combined them in design strips of various sizes.   The wave design you see makes me think of fabric and gives a counterpoint to the structure of lines.  The piece above is approx 5" x 7" and it really does make me happy to see it.   Canes made into design strips Here's a little about the process:  The packages of clay were conditioned so they would be easy to work.  I made sheets of thin black polymer to use as wrapping for the finished design strips.  I think the black delineates the strip and pops the color. Each design strip i

Canes - long rolls of polymer clay set in patterns If you design and make polymer canes you probably have boxes of them stacked in shelves like I do. And if you sometimes look at all the cases of canes and wonder "What am I going to do with those rolls of patterned polymer clay?" then we are a lot alike! One of many boxes of canes - waiting! This week my attention span was just long enough to take a few of the canes and put them together in new ways and make some beads and buttons.  The color choices were blacks, gray, white and a little rusty red wrapped in thin black casings.  The canes needed a little massaging to activate the clay since they were older. unfired buttons The buttons are 1/8" slices with the pattern going through the button.  Be sure and notice the color change from the unfired clay to the fired clay.  I try to make a couple of sizes of each pattern. fired buttons     The beads are made of thinly sliced canes applied to scrap