CLICK HERE FOR A LINK TO A MASTER CLASS VIDEO ABOUT MAKING FLORAL CANES
It is easy to begin making flowers to use in your Artwork. You can begin with a simple jellyroll, bullseye or folded cane.
The easiest one to make is made with simple rolls of extruded or rolled colors.
Six of the same colors wrapped around your center color.
When done, cover them totally with black slip.
Then I assemble the cane using more black slip … very messy job.
It's just that easy to make a large cane like this.
I make the centers for my flowers as described below.
First I extrude some colored coils. Then I coat them with black slip.
** Note that I marked the colors before I applied the slip.
Then I roll out a thin slice of clay
Put the coils in the center and roll it up.
I make them large, then roll them down to various smaller sizes.
To start a more complicated flower, I roll a strip of colored clay around this center core.
You can use slip or a light spritz of water to keep it all together.
Mark where you want your flower petals.
Carry this line down the side of the cane so the bottom will match the top.
Use a rib to open up the cane petals down the sides.
Shape the petals however you want and add some white clay to keep the shape.
When you are done, you can wrap the whole cane in white clay if you are not using it immediately. Doing this protects your patterns.
It is quite easy to simply cut out the white if you don’t want to use it.
Smooth the edges using dry cleaner plastic to prevent smudges.
Here is another example of a simple flower design made this way.
This is a flower you build without a core piece and add one of your choice at the end … if you want to.
Cut into as many pieces as you want to make petals. The pieces do not have to be even as flower petals are all different.
Shape them into petals and re-assemble.
At this point you can add a tube of colored clay in the middle so it looks like the center of the flower.
Add soft white clay in between petals to hold the shape.
In order to transport or save your lovely work, I always suggest wrapping the design in white clay.
If you bump it, the white gets damaged, not the flower.
You can use slip instead of water to get an interesting pattern in your flowers.
You can also roll your bulls eye canes very thin to make small flowers.
Simply stack them (using slip or a spritz of water) into whatever flower shape you like.
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You could also use them individually to decorate plain surfaces by slicing them thin and adding to the surface.
A good way to store your patterns is to wrap them in a damp cloth, then wrap in plastic and store in aplastic bag or container. You can fire a small sample for easy identification.
This design is a take on the friendship bracelets children make at camp.
It was an experiment done by Richard Lopez in one of my workshops.
These are bowls made from the cane above.
Note how much darker and intense the colors are after they are fired.
I also use this FOLDED CANE method described on the STRIPES page to make the block of clay.
Then I cut and shaped it adding soft white clay to hold the pattern.
I used black slip on all the colored parts to make the colors pop.
Notice I shaped and used the center core in an unusual way here.
Some green from another pattern finished the bottom.