Gumnut Cane

Amanda — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 12:28:51 +0000

Recently I had a request for a set of buttons with gumnuts on them. For those who don’t know what a gumnut is, its the ‘capsule’ for the flower of the Eucalyptus tree. These are very common here in Australia and there are many different colours and shapes depending on the species. Here’s a photo of one from our own garden:

So, here is a step by step series of photos showing how I created the gumnut cane. Enjoy!

Millefiori, what’s that?

Amanda — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 07:10:27 +0000

You may have seen some intricate polymer clay work around which has detailed images or patterns embedded in the clay and wondered, ‘is that painted on?’, ‘how do you do that?’. This technique is called millefiori, here’s its dictionary definition:

mil.le.fi.o.ri

–noun

decorative glass made by fusing multicolored glass canes together, cutting them crosswise, joining them into new groups, embedding the groups in transparent glass, and blowing the resultant mass into a desired shape.

Also, mil.le.fi.o.re.

Origin:
1840–50; < It, equiv. to mille thousand (< L) + fiori, pl. of fiore < L fl?ri- (s. of fl?s) flower

from dictionary.com

Here is a picture of some of my millefiori cane work:

Canes are created by rolling long tubes of clay and forming them into shapes. Clay is packed around the shape to hold it in place. This is similar to the way they make lollies with names and logos in the center at places like Roc Candy. As you can see, my canes are tiny, usually no bigger than a few centimeters across. Many people make canes the size of a dinner plate, like this one.

There are many great tutorials on-line for how to make the cane but this is where I started, on Heather’s Over The Rainbow tute. It was seeing this while visiting her site to buy jewelery findings that I got the polyclay bug.

After creating your canes you can make all sorts of things with them such as is seen in these photos;

Pendants

Beads

Earrings

Caning can be a challenge but once mastered its very rewarding. Why don’t you have a go?

polyclarific.com » cane

Gumnut Cane

Millefiori, what’s that?

mil.le.fi.o.ri