In working with polymer clay, there are a few necessary tools that I use to create my cane work. First of all I use a Black and Decker mini food chopper to help soften and mix my clay to a half way state. I then use a manual pasta press to run my clay through, to finish the mixing. The pasta machine is also indispensable as it will run the clay out in sheets of even thickness. This ensures that while building a cane that the clay sheet is the same thickness from top to bottom as I build up my log. Once my cane is complete, rolled down and ready to slice, I use a special blade to cut it. The blades are a long and very sharp medical blade called tissue slicing blades. They can be ordered from a medical company but a lot of the clay companies now carry their own brands. For a list of clay and tool suppliers click here.
In creating a face I always begin with constructing the eye. I begin with a roll of white clay (this is the highlight in the center of the eye) and wrap sheets of clay around it to become the pupil. The eye color is then wrapped around the pupil, and white triangles added to each side. I continue to build the flesh color around the eye, until I have an elaborate design. I then roll and stretch the eye until it is half it's original width, cut it in half, and flip one over to create 2 identical eyes.
I make the nose and lips the same way, reducing by rolling and stretching until all the features are the right size in relation to each other.
I then begin to attach the eyes to the nose using other sheets of clay. I mix a lot of flesh shades to softy blend the features together. I then attach the lips and fill out the rest of the face with more chunks of clay.
In this photo you can see that the face is almost done. The larger chunks of clay fill out the rest of the face making it look like a mosaic. The face ends up being the size of a large coffee cup. I will reduce it to half it's size by compressing and rolling before beginning to add any hair or other details.
This shows the size relationship of the cane when I first started to join the face piece's and the finished, rolled down version to the right.
This entire cane took about 100 hours to put together. It was also the size (in diameter) of a dinner plate before reduction! Needless to say reducing it was very hard work. Now I make sure to never let my canes get this big again.

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