Polymer Skull Cane Version 2.3

Long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away I was messing about with skull polymer canes even though I didn't know the first thing about polymer canes.  If you truly are interested in making a skull cane, I'd advise you to read through my first post.  First, so you don't make any of those mistakes, but also that post covers a lot more information that I won't be repeating here. This time around I righted some of those previous wrongs, unfortunately I found new ways to muck things up.  So here is more advice on what not to do.

It started out simple enough with a disk of white clay. 

That's about 15mm thick, 6cm in diameter.  

Laying the design on the clay I used a pin to poke an outline.

I cut out the design.  The reason behind cutting it across the middle was to make it easy to remove the white and add the black, like I saw done in this Hello Kitty cane video. Also it worked well for me last time. Since than I've come across this skull video, which is pretty nice by the way and doesn't end up wonky like mine.  I like the way she uses a round cutter to remove the eye area.  Now I would need to create a custom cutter to remove the eyes in one piece, but I think making multiple cuts using a small circular cutter along the inside of the dotted line would produce a similar result.

I used my template again to size the black clay for the eyes.

If this was a movie, this would be the freeze frame with the voice-over explaining why it is from this pivotal moment that everything from this point forward goes wrong. 

Somehow the white area between the eyes became very small.  You can see where I added a strip of white to compensate.  That might have been all right had I taken the time to really blend it in.  I should have also taken the time to shape the teeth better.  See how the bottoms curve up? That's only going to get worse. And while I commend myself for remembering to use a matching clay between the teeth, I should have made the wedges thinner.

Here I've added slices of a different cane to create a boarder around the skull.  The biggest problem here is those individual segments are going to move differently against the skull while reducing.  

Here with past and present mistakes side by side you can really see what I'm talking about. [For reference the starting canes on the left are approximately 6cm wide, while the finished beads on the right are about 2cm.]  The cane below I wrapped a mostly continuous band of clay around the skull before adding slices of decorative boarder and the outer edge of the skull stayed fairly smooth.  Whereas above I didn't and the skull is all jagged.  When you reduce a cane the clay is going to push into any available space.  I knew that, and I still didn't comprehend how the end product would be affected. Hopefully I've learned my lesson this time.  

The cane I used for the purple and blue outer layer was based on this "Static" cane on Craftster.org.  I learned a few things the hard way with that too.

My first mistake was buying hard clay. The Blue Bottle Tree has an excellent article on buying clay.  I gave it a little test squeeze in the store and convinced myself that it wasn't "that" hard, mostly because I just wanted to get my clay, get home and get started on this project.  I would've been time ahead if I had just tried another store for softer clay. 

No matter how hard I worked it, it wasn't getting the consistency I wanted.  I didn't have any clay softener, so I thought if I used translucent clay instead of white to make my skinner blend that would help which is sort of, but not exactly, following advice again from The Blue Bottle Tree.  That did make the clay more workable and I was able to make the cane, but it didn't move as well as the softer colors when I reduced the cane.  Beads and Beading mentions using clays that are the same consistency and temperature, along with other useful tips for making canes. Many of which I have demonstrated what happens if you don't follow them. You're welcome.

Also after baking there are little pits and cracks in the static cane area. I've never had that happen before, so I suspect the dry purple clay. They are really teeny tiny and not all that noticeable.  The problem is they are scattered all the way through so no amount of sanding with get rid of all of them and that interfered with buffing the beads to a high gloss sheen.

On the subject of skinner blends, they are often done with the help of a pasta machine.  If you're like me and not invested enough to get a pasta machine you can use a simple roller, it just takes more effort. This is a helpful video about making a skinner blend by hand.

Even though my static cane didn't turn out exactly like the original, I think it looked quite lovely around my skull before I reduce the skull cane.  After reducing you can see in the very first picture of this post the beads look really dark, almost black or midnight blue.  Below you can see how sanding and buffing brings out the colors.  That is in the right light, close up. From a distance they still look pretty dark. In fact in that first picture one bead has been sanded and buffed, can you tell which one?Also see how my skull got all twisty.  I keep seeing people roll their canes and think that I can do that.  Well I can't and the minute I roll it, it gets things all twisty and I need to just stop doing that and only squeeze it.  [See my first cane post if this doesn't make any sense.]

If I had a soft purple and used a plain white clay instead of translucent, I think they would have been a bit lighter, but still not like the original post I saw.  I have since learned that not all skinner blends are equal.  This is a very helpful video showing skinner blend comparisons. I made mine similar to the first example in the video, when I believe the last example would have given me more of the result I wanted.

There is one thing that I did this time around that I am very happy with. I made some complimentary beads using the same colors.  Some of them I covered with thin slices of the cane ends.  I also layered thick slices of my purple static cane and the butt ends of the skull cane and tried some Mokume Gane techniques.  I think it's a good way to use up the distorted ends of the canes. 

The only ones that are sanded and buffed are the top three large beads in the very last picture.  It doesn't show well in the pictures, but the colors of the buffed beads are very vibrant and crisp, while the rest are dull and cloudy looking.

Well that's it for mistakes this go around.  I hope you learned as much as I did without all the pain and agony.  Just the pain and agony of trudging through this long post, but hey you made it to the end you should give yourself a cookie!

Polymer Clay Skull Cane

This isn't so much a tutorial as an opportunity to learn from my mistakes and references that I found  helpful in my endeavors.  If I were a smart person, I would have started with simple cane designs and eventually work my way up to more complex designs.  I am not that person.  I jumped right into trying a skull cane, and big surprise it wasn't the most brilliant skull cane ever created, but it was a learning experience.  The beads above are from my second attempt, so let us travel back to my first round of mistakes and see how I ended with these.  For anyone else out there trying to short cut straight to skull canes, may the wind be ever at your back and your canes come out less deformed than mine. 

This is the base of my first cane.  I think it looks like an x-ray of Wallace saying, "Cheeeese."

Let's just go down the list of mistakes:

1) Thinking that reducing the cane was somehow magically going to make things look better. 

• I believe the opposite is true, the more flaws, the more distortion you are going to have in the final product.

2) Having big gaps in the design. 

• Again distortion as the clay pushes into those empty pockets.

3) Not filling out the negative space around the design enough.

• I originally intended for this to be a round design, but failed to flesh out a full circle. As if the first two mistakes didn't distort things enough, this only made it worse.

I wish I would've watched this video before I did any of this.  She fills in all the tiny gaps and you'll notice she works the center components further reducing gaps, before moving out to the next layer. 

Not a skull, but I think this hummingbird is a prime example of starting off with a really good foundation. The design doesn't change much from the beginning to the finished cane.



And this is what my skull ended up looking like. After seeing how the skull was morphing I went with a rectangular shape.  Not anything close to my original idea, but alright in freakish octopus ghost-like skull kind of way.

I tried a completely different approach for round 2.  I was inspired by this Hello Kitty cane video, I liked the way she started with a solid form and cut into it to add components.  I started with a thick disk of marbled white and pearl clay.  Then I printed out my skull image approximately the same size and laid it on top of the clay.  Then just like carving a pumpkin, I made pin pricks along the lines of the image and used those as a guide for trimming the clay.  I forgot to take pictures, but the photoshopped image below should give you an idea.  The dotted lines are supposed to be the pin pricks and the black line represents where I cut straight across the clay.  That made it easier to cut out the eye sockets and also to insert the black clay. 

Once the white clay was the proper shape, I made black cylinders for the eyes, those I sized up by laying them on top of the image.  Those were trimmed to the same thickness as the white clay.  Then I fit thin wedges of black in between the teeth. Here I should have used the red mix between the teeth or stayed with the black, but added a thin line of black all the way around the skull.  For the red I marble together a bunch of colors; red, orange, gold and a little purple and black.  I rolled it out into a long strip, cut it the same thickness of the skull and trimmed around the edge of the skull, plus some added bits to make it a full circle.

For the outer edge I made a separate cane and reduced it down until it was long enough to fit around the skull. The cane was then cut into chunks the thickness of the skull and place along the edge. Here's what it looked like before I reduced it. You can't see from this view but it was only a half inch thick, by the time it was reduced to the proper length the red details were pretty skinny and all those little colorful swirls were almost completely lost.  Just something to keep in mind when you're planning things out. 

I added a thin strip of black clay around the whole thing.  It wasn't until I had squeezed everything together that I noticed I had two pieces of the outer cane backwards.  I made an attempt at fixing, but it was already fused together and I felt I'd do more damage trying to fix it then just leaving it.  I know its a sign that I'm mental that it still irritates me.

 

Then I reduced the cane, cutting it at various sizes. I found this video to be very helpful for reducing canes. I've seen quite a few videos where after reducing by squeezing, they reduce further by rolling.  I have no idea how they can do that without any twisting.  I tried that for a little bit and immediately started twisting the cane.  Also the ends of the cane start to look a little alarming.  I was nervous that things had gone terribly wrong until I cut into the cane.  I think it turned pretty well. 

So cutting the cane is a whole other thing that I don't have a good answer for.  I read a lot of different methods, so many in fact that I ended up ignoring most of them.

The few things I did do was to chill the cane to firm it up.  I used a fresh cutting blade.  I stood up to slice the cane.  I guess you are more apt to cut at an angle toward you while sitting. And I rotated the cane after each slice, so I wasn't always mushing it down on the same side. 

I did make even slices, but I still distorted them a bit when cutting.  I also made a few  thin slices and used them to cover balls of of scrap clay.  After I had all my slices, I put on latex gloves to prevent fingerprints and reshaped the slices a little to fix any squished or flat spots. To use these for beads I poked a straight pin about halfway through one side and then poked it halfway through the other side.  Once it was all the way through I replaced it with a slightly thicker head pin.  With the head pin in place I gave the bead a few light pats to make sure it was level and smooth. Then I flipped it over and did the same thing on the other side. Sometimes it took a few more flips, sometimes I had to adjust the shape of the bead after removing the head pin.  I'll be the first to admit it wasn't the most expedient process. It's possible to avoid all this by baking the canes whole and then slicing and drilling holes afterwards, but I like how working each slice rounded the edges and I don't trust myself to drill straight. I thought ahead enough to give some of the beads vertical holes and the other half horizontal.  I wish I had done a few of the square beads with parallel horizontal holes near the top and bottom. 

Then I baked at 275, using the tile and aluminum pan set up described at TheBlueBottleTree.com 

So that brings us to sanding. I found this video to be helpful.  I used 3M sandpaper in 400, 600, 800, 1000, 1200, and 2000 grit from the paint department at Home Depot. They came in packs of ten sheets and I've only used a half sheet of each so far.  So I have enough sandpaper to last a lifetime, but I wasn't impressed with what I read about other papers sold in smaller quantities.

I spent the most time with the 400 grit, sanding until both sides of the beads felt completely smooth.  I liked that part because there was a notable stopping point, it's easy to tell when you don't feel anymore rough spots.  After that I sanded both sides for 20-30 seconds with each grit of paper.  Was that enough? I don't know. Did I really need to do all six grits? Don't know, but I'm happy with the results and I'd do it that way again. This was a bit time consuming, I'm thankful for kids in sports. To sand on the go I would bring an air tight container with a screw on lid filled with ice water and a squirt of dish soap to dip the sandpaper and beads in.  My work surface was a piece of soft foam on a waterproof tray. If I were going to get fanatical about making beads, I'd probably invest in a tumbler, as it is I still haven't sanded the round beads. 

After sanding, is buffing and I used a scrap piece of denim leftover from my binder. The more you buff, the shiner it gets. Sanding gives the surface a dull look and I found that a vigerous 30 seconds on each side was enough to bring the color back, with more of a matte finish. The more you buff the shinier it gets.  In the first picture you can see that the largest bead has been buffed the most.

And what I said earlier about a smart person starting off with a easier cane? Now that I've started to think about what I'm going to do with all these beads, it would be nice to have some accent beads with a simple pattern using the same colors.  Just saying...

...but I'll leave that for another time.

Spidercorn

This is what happens when you get dragged through the nine sparkly circles of unicorn hell and finally come out the other side, the physical manifestation of the elusive Spidercorn.

One my daughter's friends, who apparently knows me all too well suggested I make a spider unicorn and I thought that was a brilliant idea.

I started with the basics from MovieTrollop's "How to make a SUPER EASY horse and/or pony", that I used for my fondant unicorn.  I just added more eyes and legs and actually used polymer clay this time. 

If you want to try making your own Spidercorn and need some eight legged inspiration Adorable Spiders lives up to it's name with tons of pictures of adorable spiders.    

Fondant Unicorn Cake Topper

Cute doesn't come naturally for me.  Attempts at cute wind up being monstrous abominations (not that I view this as a bad thing). So I'm just as surprised as anyone that this adorable little guy was made by me.  I did have a little help from this wonderful video from MovieTrollop, "How to make a SUPER EASY horse and/or pony".  There's no way I would've come up with this on my own. Left to my own devices I would've been flailing all over the place. Even though the tutorial is for making tiny (an inch?) little horse bodies out of polymer clay, it easily translated to a five inch fondant body.  She starts by showing the size of all the balls of clay that are needed in proportion to each other, from there it's easy to make a body of any size. 

I used Wilton fondant.  I read quite a few recommendations that Wilton is a good brand for newbies, at least for this type of thing, as it tends to be stiffer.  It seemed like most professionals use higher grade fondants with hardening agents mixed in.  I don't plan to become proficient at fondant, so Wilton is fine for the likes of me. I'm happy to leave real cake decorating to true artists. 

I also read that Wilton is one of the worse tasting fondants, but then does anyone actually eat this stuff?  I've never heard anyone say, "Oh you have to try this fondant it's so delicious." Probably the highest compliment I've heard anyone give any particular fondant is, "It doesn't taste horrible." That folks, is not enough of a reason for me to put something in my mouth. 

For this guy I used most of a 24oz package.  I used about two-thirds of it for the body, legs, ears and nostrils. It is definitely softer than polymer clay. After forming the body, I turned it over, and stuck a toothpick through each front leg and one through the base of the body into the head, for a little added support.  Then I flipped it back over and added the nostrils and ears.  I brushed the whole thing with Wilton white pearl dust and then added the eyes which are round black candies. Then I set a parchment paper tent over it to protect from dust and let it set for a while.  The front legs did get tiny wrinkles, like elephant legs, from the weight of the head pressing down, but no one but me seems to have noticed. 

I colored some of remaining fondant using Wilton neon gel colors.  I made the horn using the same process I used to make the polymer clay horns.  I used a teeny bit purple and a teeny bit blue fondant marbled with white. I stuck a toothpick two thirds into the horn and then stuck the other end into the head. The hair is the opposite with a lot of purple and blue marbled with a teeny bit white.  I brushed on a little bit of water to attached the hair. Here's a few shots from different angles. 

I let it dry out for a few days in a deep dish covered with parchment paper.  Besides keeping dust off, I also read that light can fade colored fondant.  My daughter wanted to keep him, so to prevent getting frosting on him, I cut out the bottom of a paper plate to match the unicorns bottom and set that down on the cake first.  I don't know how long he'll last, but for now he's in a bell jar, in a cool place that gets very limited light.  He hasn't melted or faded or attracted bugs or seeped any of his cutest into the rest of my realm. 

Unicorn Poop Charm

The whole reason I started on my adventures with polymer clay is because I saw some rainbow poop cookies and thought they looked awesome but would probably taste like crap with all the artificial coloring.  (The whole reason I started down this dark path of unicorns and rainbows is something we do not speak of.)

If you are a polymer clay virgin like I was, you might want to read this, I listed a few things that helped me to get started. 

Much like the unicorn horns the only thing I did differently than most of the rainbow poops out there is the way I add the eye pin and mix the colors. 

I used the marbling technique in this video to mix the colors.  I love the way this looks, but I think a little bit goes a long way and too much will muddy the colors. It might be my imagination, or that I need to improve my technique, but I found I got better results when starting with larger quantities of clay. The amount I used below is enough to make 8-10 poops approximately 3/4 inch diameter at the base. This video shows how to make rainbow poop with a nice basic twist of colors which is just as pretty, just a different look and less steps. 

I think this video has nicely shaped poop.  This video also has a nice poop shape and was the inspiration for how I do my eye pin. If you just want to make a stand alone poop like this golden poop my daughter made, just skip the eye pin altogether. All hail the Golden Turd!

I couldn't help but notice that other people had poop swirls far superior to mine.  What I've decided many poops later is that:

While I totally recommend making cute
little poop earrings, these aren't the
greatest shape for the reasons mentioned.

a) I was tapering the ends too much.  Leaving most of the log a uniform length and just tapering off the tippy top of the ends results in a much more pleasing poop shape.


This poop is in serious danger of
being mistaken for soft serve ice cream.

b) I was making my logs too thin and coiling them too much.  I believe three is the magic number of poop swirls, four can be acceptable, but it starts to look more like a soft serve ice cream cone. than poop. 



c) The last video I mentioned coils the poop around a small piece of clay.  For me it is easier to coil the poop and then feed the center piece through the bottom. Skip down to the bottom to see pictures.  In fact just skip down to the bottom anyway, it's only the last few steps that are really important anyway. 

I started with approximately 1/8 inch slices of each color.  I used Premo Sculpey Accents Pink Florescent, Orange, Zinc Yellow, Accents Bright Green Pearl and Accents Peacock Blue Pearl. I love the sparkle that the Accent colors give to these poops. I stacked them and then rolled them flat and then rolled them into a tube. You could roll each color into a snake and then press them together. 

Gently press evenly on all sides until there is no space in the center. 

 

 

Roll it out into a log and give it a nice twist.

Then fold the ends to the middle and twist.

Roll it out until it's smooth. Cut it in half, set one half aside and roll the other out. I do this a lot, working it a little and then setting half aside for later. Working down to a smaller chunk of clay makes it more manageable.   Also if I don't like the end result, I've only messed up that one little piece, not the whole batch. 
Because it's always the last twist that was the one time too many. 

Cut that in half, set one aside and roll the other out.

Twist the ends to spiral the colors.

Fold the ends to the center and give it a twist.

 

 

Roll it out, cut it half and set one piece aside. It can be helpful to loosely coil the final log of clay to see if it's about the right length and thickness. 

The piece below is pretty close, you want it a tad shorter and thicker because after the next step it'll be just right. 

 

 

Roll the piece out a little more and cut a bit off the end.
Taper the ends and roll the bit around the eye part of the eye pin. 
For size reference that is a two inch long eye pin.

 

 

Coil the log into a poop shape and insert the eye pin through the center.

 

 

At this point I put on a pair of latex gloves, to keep from leaving anymore fingerprints.  Gently cradling your poop so you don't misshapen it, use a ball stylus tool or similar to smooth out the center piece. That center piece doesn't have to fill the entire cavity, remember it's only purpose is to hold that eye pin secure. Turn the poop back over and smooth away any fingerprints with a gloved finger or smooth tool.  And there you have your poop. 

To bake, I used the set up described at The Blue Bottle Tree, with the tile and aluminum pans clipped together.  I baked it at 275 for 2 hours. This poop was about 3/4 inch at the base.  The Sculpey instructions say a half hour for every 1/4 inch.  I've read a lot of people saying to bake for longer, so I've been tacking on a little extra time to be on the safe side.  

Ever hear the expression, "You can't polish a turd."? Not only has that been debunked by MythBusters, but you can see from the results below that you absolutely can polish a turd.

After baking and cooling, I did a little wet sanding, quickly going around in little circles, maybe spending 10-15 seconds with each grit of paper. I used 400, 600, 800, 1000, 1200 and 2000.  I didn't worry about getting into every nook and cranny. I also didn't worry about sanding the eye pins and accidentally sanded the finish off in some places, oops. After sanding, I buffed with a piece of denim. The more you buff, the shinier it gets.  The poop on the far right below was buffed for about a minute. The poop in the middle was buffed an additional minute and look how it gleams.  The poop on the left was not sanded or buffed, it just has a coat of glossy acrylic on it.  It's more work to sand and buff, but I like the finish better. 


Then wire wrap the end and if you so chose, decorate with glitter glue, rhinestones or googly eyes.  If you are unfamiliar with wire wrapping this is a nice illustration or if you like more detail here's a comprehensive video.