General FYI to everyone: I’ve recently started a “Spotlight” feature hear at the blog for showcasing project photos and stories submitted by all of you. You can read all about it in the “Jupiter Beads” link by my name above.

The Kato white was extremely difficult to condition, even after 30 goes through the pasta machine it was still cracking in the end I mixed it with some premo translucent, that worked. The gold was easy peasy. I made up four blobs of colour using the white and the four concentrates and then set about mixing up shades of purple and ochres. They looked great.

I made a geometric triangle, which was then reduced and cut up and formed into a cane.

I was very impressed with the final result. Probably the best cane I have made, with crisp clean lines and good shape.

I would definitely use Kato again for the more intricate canework, but to be honest I’ll stick to Premo for everything else.

I’d love to post a photo to show but I’m inept regarding computers – I’ll have to speak nicely to Mr Polyanya!

Let us know how your experimenting goes with the Kato clay. Also tell us if you found it difficult to condition or if they have softened the clay up a bit.

Looking forward to the video tutorial!

As far as the contrast that is easier to see when you start smaller too. Since there isn’t a huge difference in size from the original cane to the reduced cane, the colors don’t darken as much. You may only need to adjust a little to get the look you want.

One trick for making the colors more harmonious, is to add a little of one color, to all the colors in your cane. For example, by adding Gold clay to every color, they will all match together. Another way is to wrap the same color around each element in your cane. This works well with Kaleidoscope canes.

I will be making videos on Kaleidoscope canes at some point, but until then I hope this helped a bit.