Technique Time: Flower Power Part 1

This post is the start of my flower power series. In this set of tutorials I will look at various ways of making flowers, as well as different flowers, in polymer clay. Spring is near where I live so I thought it would be fun to do. :)

This specific tutorial is about how to make a six-petaled flower cane.

Why Make Six-petaled Flower Canes?

First off these are pretty easy to make once you know the basic shapes involved, try looking at a flower outside or an image online. Also they are pretty common, and great for beginners to start doing flower cane work with.

They can be a great way to use up scrap colored clay or left over canes as well.

How To Make A Six-petaled Flower Cane?

My flower cane is actually made up of other canes, but one can start off with solid colors. ;)

1) My petals are made from a rainbow skinner blend. Yes I am using the Cindy's Teardrop technique still.



As you can see above I used a ripple blade to give the rainbow skinner blend an interesting look to it, swirling the colors together.

Tip: If you don't want to go through the trouble of making a skinner blend then just use a solid color that you wish your petals to be.

2) I made a long snake from my rainbow skinner blend with my palms. Then cut that into six shorter snakes. You can see one of my shorter snakes below.



3) Gently shape your snakes into petals by pinching one side of it with your thumb and index finger.




As you can see from the picture above my petals are now shaped like a teardrop.

4) Set your petals aside for a moment to rest and you can now begin the center of the flower. This can simply be a rolled up snake of another color, with a thin sheet of a contrasting color around it. This snake should be smaller then the petals.



The picture above shows my center, which is a checkerboard cane that I made round instead of square. I reduced this cane until it was small enough to be used with the petals.


5) You may or may not need to do this step, depends on how you want your flower to look like. For my flower though I decided to wrap each petal with a small sheet of black so the petals would not blend in together when the flower is complete.




6) Now you may slowly put the petals around the flower's center, be careful not to distort the petals' shape.




7) Once step # 6 is finished you may decide that this is how you want your flower to look. If that is the case feel free to reduce your cane, the picture below shows my flower up to this point.



8) For my flower I added another step. I decided to wrap it with a two sheets of transparent clay. This gives it a nice look when it is cured. Make sure to blend the sheets ends nicely.




I used the #5 setting on my pasta machine for the two sheets of transparent clay as shown above wrapped around my flower. On my pasta machine, #9 is the thickest, yours may vary.

9) After the transparent sheet was put on I reduced and this is my completed six-petaled flower cane:





My Final Words:

Flower canes are really fun to do and can be put on a number of items such as glass, beads, wood, and so forth. One can also use any color combination, or canes to make them truly unique.

My next post for this series shall be about 3-D flowers.