February 2019 Meeting Notes & Supply List

The February meeting of the Central Mississippi Polymer Clay Guild will be held on Saturday, February 16, 2019 from 10am to 3pm at the Pearl Library. We will be doing a minimum of 3 Kaleidoscope Canes starting with a Black and White Kaleidoscope cane.  

We will move on from this cane to another fairly simple kaleidoscope using 2 blends. You get to pick the colors you want for this one. Be mindful of light to dark and we may be adding white and black to give you some extra pop. I recommend one cool blend and one warm blend.  You want some light and some dark in this cane. It’s all done with 2 skinner blends, cutting and making into a triangle. 

Now for some real fun.  We are going to make a colorful kaleidoscope cane using some of the new canes we’ve just made, plus any that you have in your cane stash or make during the meeting.  You will want some light and some dark canes to add interest to the kaleidoscope cane.  Some options for this could be a jellyroll cane, bullseye cane or an accordion folded slab.  (Look back at the January email for a picture of some of the cane types that might work well.) There are some great youtube videos about this or if time allows, we can review these during the meeting.    

So we’ve combined all these different canes into one.  What makes it a kaleidoscope?  We will carefully reshape the combined cane into a right angle triangle.  By cutting thin slices and placing them side by side, you can see different repeating patterns based on which side of the triangle you put together.  Another way to see the possible design options is to use a small mirror.  

CLAY:

Black

White

Your choice of 4 colors that will work together, but have a light side to it and a dark color. Try ecru to dark brown for the warm blend and a light blue to ultramarine for the cool blend as your example, but please pick your own colors! 

Bring plenty of black and white clay. There is a sale in Hobby Lobby this week on clay. I urge you to get a large black and a large white to keep in your travel bag to bring to all meetings. I also keep a large translucent with my travel bag too. 

More colors to make canes, or bring ones you have lying around your stash. These will need to be reawakened. Remember Jana taught us if they are old to coat them with a very thin layer of liquid sculpey clay and wrap. Don’t keep these cold before the meeting as you will need to warm them up with your hands to rearrange. And when choosing your canes, the length will be of importance. You want longer rather than shorter for this as you are putting some work into it, why run out of what you need. The main cane will be dependent on your shortest cane which you will need to divide into 6 pieces. If you bring in 2”canes it’s going to be tuff to get much cane finished.

TOOLS:

Your normal working tools

A sharp stiff blade

12 inch ruler (if it has mm even better)

A Marxit tool if you have one

An acrylic rod and/ or acrylic brayer

Small mirror if you want to bring it or have one

Candy paper or clear saran wrap