A cane is one of the most common, simple, but interesting ways to work with polymer clay. The essence of the technique is to fashion a sausage, on the cross section of which a planned pattern is obtained. It would not be superfluous to say that another of the names of this technique is millefiori, from Italian - “a thousand flowers”. Technology borrowed from the Italian masters of glass work.
I post one of the lessons of this technique for beginners. I'll post a couple more later, as soon as I take pictures of the process.

Materials and equipment:

• 2 layers polymer clay FIMO, in our case it is: FIMO Effect translucent green
• FIMO Soft gray dolphin
• Knives for polymer clay. If there are no special ones, then you can use a regular blade from a clerical knife.
• Work surface: glass, for example, from a photo frame with at least A4 format, or ceramic tiles with a flat, smooth surface.
• Acrylic roller, or any suitable for these purposes glass jar, bottle.
• It would be nice to have a pasta machine (noodle cutter), but we can do without it. By the way, its absence will allow us in the same lesson to see the so-called "smooth transition from one color to another without using a paste machine", that is, manually.

Here, in general, this is all that we will need.

So let's get started!

We take half of the plastic of translucent green, gray colors and cut each of them diagonally as shown in fig. 1. Swap one part of the green layer with the same part of the gray layer (Fig. 2)

Now we divide each resulting layer into 8 or more approximately identical parts (Fig. 3). The more parts you divide them into, the smoother and more imperceptible the color transition from gray to green will be.

Thoroughly mix pieces in pairs with the same content of green and gray. As a result, we get 8 pieces (barrels) of various shades from pale greenish-gray to green (see Fig. 4). smooth transition from dolphin gray to translucent green. Let me just say that I didn't do it.

We collect our barrels one by one into a single sausage (Fig. 5), roll it out wide (Fig. 6), and fold the “roll”, starting from the end of the gray color (Fig. 7). Let's roll our "roll" a little. Thus, we got a cylinder, in the center of which (along the entire length) the plastic is gray, and outside it is green.

Now we begin to make veins at our leaflet. To do this, we put the cylinder on the base and make several parallel cuts along its length (Fig. 8). On the cut we get a parallelepiped. Between each two such sections we lay a pre-rolled thin (2-2.5 mm) green plastic sheet (see Figures 9-13). For the master class, I added a little dark green (FIMO Effect, opal green) plastic to the second half of the translucent green plastic. If this is not done, then on your leaf the veins in the center of the leaf will be clearly visible and will become completely invisible at the edges.

Next, we make another cut of the cylinder obliquely (Fig. 14) to make the central vein. We roll a green sheet in the same way to the cut of one part of the cylinder. We turn the second part of the cylinder “upside down”, connect both parts, and wrap the resulting cylinder with a thin layer of green polymer clay (Fig. 15-16).

Now the final and, in my opinion, the most interesting stage. Gently, with slightly squeezing movements towards the center of the cylinder, we begin to pull out the sausage (cane), while our barrel becomes thinner and longer.

Now you can roll the sausage to the desired diameter and trim the edges.

On the cut, our sausage will look like this:

Now we cut the sausage into slices, give these slices the shape of a leaf. A hole in the leaf can be made with a toothpick before baking, or you can drill holes in the hardened plastic. We bake the leaves in the oven at a temperature of 110-130 ° C for 15-20 minutes.

The process is laborious but the result is worth it!

Master class on making a cane "Poppy" from polymer clay with your own hands.

MK prepared:HandMadeSTUDIO (HMStudio)

Today I will show you how to make a beautiful flower cane (aka sausage, or kane) with airy petals. In the process of work, we will create a gradient and fold these blanks in different ways.

To create such a cane, we need:

Polymer clay of the required colors (I have red, black, herbal and vanilla, and for the background I used translucent clay);
- knife or scalpel;
- pasta machine or rolling pin;
- and work surface.

I roll the workpiece into a tube so that the light color is inside. I wrap the workpiece with a thin layer of black clay. I'm squeezing. I cut it into two unequal parts. The part that I put off less - it will be the middle itself, and I still squeeze the second part, and cut it into pieces in length like the middle - these will be stamens.

Then I start creating the petals. I make a gradient of red and black clay. There should be less black, otherwise your flower will be very dark. In general, the colors of the gradient can be completely different. It is not necessary to take black, you can, for example, take some kind of scarlet, or darken red first, and then use it to work.
Note! We put this blank in an accordion!

Then we squeeze it a little so that the layers are well connected to each other and there are no air bubbles .. Give the workpiece a rounded shape.


I roll out the cane to such a size that it can be divided into three equal parts according to the height of the prepared middle with stamens. These first three petals should be quite thick (large).


In order for the petals to “not be lost” when squeezing the sausage, I make a small edging with black clay, but not completely.


I give the petals a shape.

I create another sausage, squeeze. This blank should be smaller in diameter, but the same height as the previous ones. These will be the outer petals. And I start to collect everything.

And in order for the extreme petals to be airy and our cane to look gentle - I make indentations with a wooden stick, and put the background color in them (I have translucent white clay).

And then I wrap this blank with pp clay. I begin to squeeze very carefully so that the pattern inside the sausage does not deform. To do this, take the workpiece in the middle, with your thumbs and forefingers, and slowly squeeze it, turning it either to the right or to the left. Squeeze a little in the middle, and then begin to squeeze and stretch along the edges.
Remember! To ensure that the pattern inside the cane is not distorted, it it is forbidden immediately roll on the work surface! Only after you have bitten the cane well, you can start rolling it. But not much!

Let's see the process of making a polymer clay cane in my video tutorial, and then we will analyze it step by step in this photo tutorial:

Such a cane was born during the experiments, but it looks so harmonious in the leaves and in the assembly finished products!

Materials and tools:
polymer clay lilac, purple, black and white,
blades: thin and thick;
rolling pin or pasta machine;
stacks with balls of different diameters;
square cutter.


I soften the clay of all colors, roll out multi-colored layers of all shades at the maximum thickness of the pasta machine, some colors can be obtained by mixing, for example, black and purple - a new color will appear - dark purple.

With a square cutter, we cut out identical blanks from each layer, except for the black one.

We fold each such square in half and cut the blade diagonally into 2 equal triangles.

Now we form 5 multi-colored layers by attaching triangles of different shades to each other. It doesn't matter how you lay the triangles, as long as they have a different color sequence in all five layers.

We roll each such blank with the help of a pasta machine and turn it into a thin layer with smooth transition colors.

We take a layer of black polymer clay - we roll it out in the thinnest mode of pasta machines - no more than 0.5 mm in thickness. We take a colored layer with a color transition - we cut it and form a rectangle with even edges, we put a black layer on the surface of such a rectangle - we cut off the excess black clay along the edges and take a thick blade.

With the blunt side of the blade, we push the upper layer of clay from the black side, press the black plastic into the colored layer, while not cutting the layer, but only pressing the top layer into the lower layer of clay. We make such notches in the form of rhombuses, i.e. in two diagonal passes we push the clay with the blunt side of the knife.

We take the second layer of colored clay, cover it with a black layer and do exactly the same manipulations with each subsequent layer.

When all the layers are ready, we collect them in a pile on top of each other.

We take the blade and use the blade to divide the stack of layers into two equal parts, put these parts on top of each other and press well so that the layers are securely fastened.

We take a small amount of white, purple and lilac clay, form squares of the same size from them and divide them with a blade diagonally into equal parts. We put the triangles in a single layer and with the help of a paste machine we make a layer with a color transition.

The resulting white-violet thin ribbon is cut with a blade along into two identical parts.

We twist one strip with a tube from the white side, and the second from the purple side - we will get two canes with a different color transition.

We will have to wrap each of the canes with a thin strip of black polymer clay and squeeze it, and then roll it out to a diameter of 5-7 mm.

We take the main layer and a stack, first with a ball of small diameter, we make a through hole on the surface of the layer, then we take a stack of a larger diameter and increase this hole.

We take the cane that we just created - we measure the length we need in height, then we take a cane of a different color, thin it to a very small diameter and wrap a wide cane around the perimeter with such thin sausages.

We cut a passage to the hole in the stack and fill the recess with the cane we just created. Place the cane and close the stack, returning it to its original rectangular shape.

We make several such holes and gradually fill them with large, complex canes, or small and thin ones - here it is up to you to fill up with such small sausages and their density in the stack.

All that remains for us now is to slightly extend the cane - while it should remain in such a square shape.

Cut off the jagged ends of the cane, then use a blade to cut it into two equal parts, connect the parts to each other - no matter what order you do it - keeping the asymmetrical pattern or flipping the parts in opposite directions.

Now you need to squeeze and stretch the cane, slightly reducing its diameter - it is more convenient to do this with a rolling pin.

Now you will need to round the cane - just roll it with your palm on the work surface.

Prepare a layer of lilac color, the thickness of such a layer should be approximately 1 mm. Now we cut the cane into four or five parts and cover each incised part with a layer of lilac color, and then dock and connect with the main cane.

A cane-barrel with lilac lintels is cut with a blade diagonally into two equal parts, one part is turned over and attached to the second half - this forms a clear pattern of a leaf with veins.

We are preparing another layer of lilac color, but very thin - the thickness of such a layer should not exceed 0.5 mm. We wrap a cane with a leaf pattern in a lilac layer.

We squeeze the cane - correctly squeeze the cane first with your hands, starting from the middle of the cane and smoothly moving to its edges, and after that it will be possible to roll out the cane to the diameter you need.

To create a cane for leaves, you need to pinch the top of the caine with your fingers and cut into slices, then flatten each leaf with your fingers and give it an arbitrary shape.
This caine appeared in the course of experiments, but it fits so perfectly and harmoniously into any flower product as leaves that you should not look for another use for it.

If the caine is wrapped with cling film, then it can be stored for a long 6 months - they took it out at any time - they cut and decorated any product.
I hope this lesson, like the previous ones, was interesting and useful.
Today I will say goodbye to you, until we meet again, friends!