My dragon's first ever cousin and I could not be more proud!

As all who follow my blog know,  yesterday I posted my first ever tutorial  (other than the page showing my swerly parren). I  posted it on various polymer clay groups,  fantasy groups and dragon groups,  only really expecting a couple of likes.

This morning however, I saw that someone hadactually commented 😲

It was a lovely woman called Jamie  (a complete stranger). She said that she could not sleep last night,  so she decided to follow my tutorial with some scrap clay.

She had never made a dragon before and had found that when other people had posted illiterated tutorials, they where difficult to follow,  but  she didn't find that to be the case with mine.

Here he is!  It's not the greatest photo,  but  it's good enough to see that it's a truly fabulous little fellow,  especially since his mum was tired and doing this for the first time.  I  assure you that he is far superior to my first.

I asked her if there was any part of the tutorial that she thought I needed to change in any way and she said no.

I was so happy that I actually cried a little and I am not a crying kind of girl!  One of my big dreams/ ambitions, is to become a polymer clay tutor.  There are a fair few out there, but most teach you how to make jewellery, beads, replica food and model babies and canes.

I want to teach model making and home decor items such as my boxes and bowels. I am too ill at the moment to do this,  but I am slowly working on writing up some lessons and handouts.

I have even got  (through much scrimping and saving) all the kit required for 8 people plus me. As soon as I stop shaking  (it's been happening for over a week and is really annoying, I am having to adapt my clay techniques to cope with it) I will be filming my first YouTube tutorial.

So, unbeknown to the lovely Jamie,  when she decided to combat the boredom of insomnia. She had actually validated all of my dreams and hard  (usually painful) work.  I'm not delusional,  I can actually teach 🎆😆🎉

How I make my decorative bowls (caning with Fimo/Polymer clay)

Have you wondered how I manage to get the same picture repeated so accurately?

What about the mystery that is how I managed to make pictures at all, considering I don't use paint  (it's all coloured clay?

I use a technique called caning.  I  have heard manycomplicated explanations on how to do this,  but I think I can make it very simple.

Your aim is to make a big picture 20 + centimetres at least.  It doesn't have to be perfect, as it will be shrunk down.  It needs to be at least a few centimetres thick.  So, if you wanted a circle,  you would make a sausage shape with the ends flat.

I advise putting a thin layer of black around the sides of the elements of the picture,  as this will give it a drawn effect.

You then need to add a background.  This is because the last stage is far easier if the picture is either round,  square or rectangular.

You then need to sandwich it between 2 glass tiles.  This is so that when you do the last stage,  it all pulls up evenly.  Without this you will end up with a lot of cane that is unusable.

Once it is sandwiched,  either leave it alone for a few hours  (which I never havethe patients for) or whack it in the fridge for 10 minutes.  If you don't do this and go straight to the last stage,  it will end up with the picture going wonky.


We are finally on to the last stage and it looks like magic!

Using your hands,  you start adding even pressure to the middle of the sides pushing outwards to the glass plates.  You need to make sure you do all the sides the same amount in order to keep your image central.

You do this until the image has shrunk down to the desired size. You can always shrink down some of the cane some more at a later point, but you can not enlarge it again.

Your image will go through the whole clay stick likein a rock sweet.  Then you can use slices.

You can use this technique to make tons of different designs. For example,
flowers

Or bullseye canes make good foliage

If you are interested in trying this,  I suggest you look on YouTube or Pintrest for Polymer clay cane tutorials.