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Peace Cane |
| This tutorial will show you how to use a rolled Skinner blend and a stacked Skinner blend to make a dimensional peace symbol with a color gradient background. If you would first like to practice the construction of this cane, solid color components can be substituted for the Skinner blended ones to make a simpler version. | |
| Step 1 Choose your background colors and using these, prepare a jelly-roll Skinner blend cane about 3/4 to 1 inch in diameter. Save an extra portion of the outermost color of the blend to use in step 9 to finish covering the cane. Prepare a stacked Skinner blend to be used to make the peace symbol in the design. Choose the color blend of your peace symbol so that it will contrast with your chosen background colors. To get a more enhanced dimensional effect within the peace symbol, choose colors with a higher contrast between them than the green and yellow used in this example. If you would like a line to be around your peace symbol design, add a thin sheet of black clay to the darker side of your stacked Skinner blend. |
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| Step 2 Cut a short length of your jelly-roll background cane. I used a piece about 1 1/2 inches long. Flatten your stacked cane with a brayer so that you form the stack as wide as the length of the cut piece of your jelly-roll cane and as long as possible after lengthening the piece by passing it through the pasta machine set on the widest setting. |
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| Step 3 Stand the jelly-roll cane on its end and mark where you will be making cuts down through the cane. First score a line with your blade that divides the cane in half. Next, score lines for the diagonals. Note that the design will look best in the end if the diagonal lines originate from a point slightly below the center of the cane. |
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| Step 4 Using the score mark as a guide, slice down through the cane, dividing it in half. |
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| Step 5 Carefully make the cuts for the diagonals. Try to support the cane so that you can get a straight cut. These pieces are the negative space of the peace symbol design. With this in mind, reshape the pieces so that each similarly shaped pair are as close as possible in size and shape. |
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| Step 6 Now we will work with elongated stacked blend from Step 2. Take a slice from the end to use as a test piece to check how thin you need to roll out your stacked blend to give a peace symbol of proper thickness and proportion based on the size of the negative space and how you would like the cane to look. Keep in mind that the thickness of the peace symbol will be doubled as the cane is put together. Also, be sure you have a length of the elongated stacked cane that can be wrapped entirely around the assembled pieces that will be made in Step 7. Thin your stacked sheet to the desired thickness and then wrap each of the background cane pieces with the darkest color (or line) against the background cane. I ended up thinning my stacked blend down to the number 3 setting on the pasta machine. |
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| Step 7 Assemble all pieces as shown, the light part of the stacked blend should be on the outside of all pieces. Smooth the seams together well and round out the shape of the cane. |
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| Step 8 Wrap the cane with another piece of the stacked sheet so the light colors touch and the dark color (or line) is towards the outside of the cane. |
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| Step 9 Wrap the outside of the cane with a sheet of clay made from the extra dark colored clay used to make the jelly-roll Skinner blend in Step 1. |
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| Step 10 Reduce and enjoy! |
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