I discovered this: spanglercandy.com, and this: Story of the Candy Cane
after reading one of the projects in Donna Kato’s updated Art of Polymer Clay. She used the candy cane twist to make tube beads. Tube beads are totally not my style, but the spiral definately is. So I studied a little further on how they make large amounts of the same spiral so that I would have enough to make a bead set and have all the stripes match.
Here is my second result. The first one I created is going to the Fire Mountain Gems 2009 Beading Contest, in my opinion it is one of the best pieces I have made thus far. I’ll be showing it off next week (I’m competitive to a fault, when I want to be. I couldn’t possibly show pictures of anything for a competition until AFTER the due date!!!!) This one was made to further celebrate the technique. I also used a mix of premo, fimo, and kato in this one- and FMG doesn’t allow that, it had to be pure Kato. I understand why, because they sell it. But I really need to soften Kato up to be able to effectively work with it. To me, “effective” means that I can create a beautiful piece in a reasonable amount of time- and Kato just takes way to long for me to condition. I don’t want to spend all my working time rolling clay thru a pasta machine! So here she is, Tribal Twist. I imagine a beautiful Jungle Queen wearing this while hunting tigers! Click to view them larger.
That is very, very cool!