Polymer Jewelry to Make - Using Handmade Beads and Clay Cane Slices

Your hand made jewelry will stand out from the crowd when you use bead designs created by YOU !  And… polymer clay canework is an important part of the process:

One of the most exciting aspects of making jewlery these days is the vast number of supplies, materials and ideas that are at your disposal.

If you make hand made jewelry, polymer clay is an amazing material that can add beautiful variety and versatility to your jewllery designs.

Unlike with glass beadmaking, it takes relatively few tools and supplies to begin making polymer clay beads. The tools to get started with polyclay (Fimo, Sculpey, Primo, etc) are inexpensive. Plus the learning curve is short compared to glass beads… yet the artistic potential is just as great.

Many beautiful polymer clay pendants, beads and charms are made using slices from clay canes. Once you become proficient at canework, your jewelry designs will come to life with originality because of the one-of-a-kind focal beads you create.

For those of you that aren't exactly sure what a polymer clay cane is and how they are made, here's a brief explanation…

Clay canes are much like those slice and bake cookies with a design that runs all the way through it. The designs are built into a 'log' of clay material known as a cane. The clay designs are built large in pieces similar to a puzzle. From the end you will see a flat image but in actuality the design goes from end to end.

This larger cane is then 'reduced' until it becomes the size that you want it to become. The extremely cool thing about polymer clay is that as you reduce the size of the cane, you are also reducing the size of the image. Now when you take a slice off the cane with a razor or tissue blade, you have a tiny, detailed image that would have been impossible to create on it's own at that miniature size.

Once you have built your cane, you can use slices of the design over and over until you run out of cane. These thin slices can be added to polymer clay beads (like the one pictured above) and to slabs of clay to make pendants.

Thicker cane pieces can also be cut and made into what's called cane slice beads. The small pirate beads in my pirate crossbones jewelry post are examples of this cane-slice bead technique.

Polymer clay and canes also have the added versatility to be combined with many other jewelry making mediums such a metal working, wire wrapping, metal clay, paper, image transfers, bead weaving, acrylic and oil painting, faux techniques and many more.

If you are a jewelry artist looking to expand your design creativity, consider learning how to use polymer clay canes to make unique focal beads. This will take your jewelry making abilities to a whole new level.

If you need help getting started with polyclay, have a look at my Bead Making for Beginner's Course. It's a great primer for getting up to speed quickly.

And then before you know it, the polymer jewelry you make using your handmade (cane slice) beads, will be virtually flying off the shelves in your Etsy store.