Update on Heather Powers amazing online Cane making course.

I have been beavering away at Heather's fantastic course - in between 'life's events' as usual.  Never enough hours in the day!

I can honestly say that I have never taken such an in depth course in all my life!  It's a four week course - but once you have subscribed it stays up forever!  And I for one will need it too.

The amount of videos showing clear step by step instructions have to be seen to be believed.  So much better for someone like me to actually see 'live' how to create each stage of the cane rather than just reading about it!  Each project not only comes with videos, but print outs too showing every single stage - an absolute boon for me with a hearing loss!  Heather shares all her 'tips and secrets' and there are pages and pages of step by step full colour course notes, with professional photos of  each stage.  It's awesome - to think that it has taken her years to evolve and develop her amazing techniques through trial and error and she is generously sharing then with us.  I have a lever arch file of her A4 pages of instructions - stage by stage - of colour photos for each element and project.  Lots of internet links, 'recipes' for each project, inspiration links, mood boards - finished projects with the beads etc.......the list is more than I can type here!

So what I have I been making - well as a beginner - a lot of mess!  My old bent fingers aren't as user friendly as they used to be, so my dragon fly cane ended up looking like a squished mosquito.  But never fear, I will try again and the polymer clay never gets wasted - not one little bit.  So my failed dragonfly cane ended up recycled as marbled beads!

But after 'sitting' on them for a couple of weeks, I realized that in all truthfulness - they do not inspire me one little bit so I will be doing a 'Mr Powers' and mixing them all up into one colour - ready to use again in another project  - of which there are many!

I did have some success in the Cattail Cane which restored my confidence.

 It will be sliced up thinly and used on lots of projects - along with some other canes - talking of which!

 

I am mightily pleased with the small leaf cane project

Using translucent cane for the outer 'casing' on these projects means that it will 'disappear' when sliced thinly and laid on a bead or whatever so that you just see the veined leaf!

I might even turn a pair of them, with the addition of a body - into a butterfly pendant!

Or am I getting ideas 'above my station'

Heather's Humblebeads awesome Blog

Heather Powers amazing polymer clay cane design bootcamp

Well it has taken me a bit of time to get started on this amazing course.  But I am feeling a lot better now, and spent a few days 'playing' - well part of the days actually!

Not only do you get step by step videos with Heather demonstrating - and sharing her amazing techniques, but also lots of links, lots and lots of information which truly astounded me.  I just thought that it would be a lesson on each of her techniques - but it is so much more than that - and links to sites, lots of her original ideas - and things I would never in a million years would have ever been able to create or imagine you could create with polymer clay - such a cheap product to work with.

This is one of my favourite silk scarves which I used for the inspiration for my cane bead lesson.

 The polymer clay I used for the light stripes was meant to turn out a pale cream but sadly as a beginner, I realised (too late) that I should have used less of the gold colour in the mix as it looks totally different than expected.

I just needed to roll this a bit more to make sure that it is perfectly round,

Here they are baking in my little halogen fan oven

Here are some of the baked green beads made using the green and red cane

Here is the red and cream cane

Here is a bead made from it

And the others I made from it too

I used up the 'rubbish' leftovers to make......

These.  I am sure that I will never use my first experimental

beads - they look nothing like Heather's

BUT I did have the most amazing, relaxing time playing with polymer clay and experimenting.

If you are interested in joining the group  you can click on a link HERE.

Thank you for visiting