Millefiori Made Easy

Transcription

1 Millefiori Made Easy With Deb Wood Prepared as an addition to the Beauty of the Sea Mermaid Class One Session 21 pages Please read through the whole session before you begin. Deb Wood /Enchanted Hearts All Rights Reserved Copyright Notice and Disclaimer: The instructions herein are copyright protected and any copying, forwarding, reposting or reprinting of any kind is strictly forbidden. This includes but is not limited to electronic duplication. Any copyright infringement is punishable by law. The information within this document is provided only to those who have been granted permission by the site owner. This class is brought to you in good faith and in no way does the author accept any responsibility for error, accident or injury to participants due to the instructions presented in this document.

2 Welcome! Welcome to this mini session on making a fairly simple Millefiori cane. Millefiori is an Italian word for 1000 flowers. This is a 17th century form of glass blowing that can now be reproduced with polymer clay. Many of the techniques for this process are adaptations from that age old art~ For this class I will show you some simple tricks to creating a teardrop design that can be used as scales on a mermaid or for other uses also! The word cane is the result of several layers of clay being built together into one structure. To explain how Millefiori works, I have used the example of taking 100 straws in about 6 colors, and placing them in a bundle. Each straw represents a length of colored clay and all together they make a design that stretches the full length of the cane, or bundle. Hopefully this class will help you understand the principles...we ll get started and I ll show you what I mean. 2

3 Supplies For this class you will need a few colors of clay, or you can blend colors with white to get a color gradation of the same shade. For my example in this class, I have used primary and secondary colors, or rainbow colors. This will show up well in the photos, giving strong contrast within the cane. So, have on hand about 2 oz of 3, 4, 5 or 6 colors, all conditioned and ready to go. You may also want to use black as an outline wrap, or white works nicely too, especially between the layers of two colors. You should also have a rolling pin, or brayer, or best of all is a pasta machine that is dedicated exclusively for clay use. You don t want to use food prep items for food once they have been used for clay. Also helpful is a large single edge blade, often called a tissue blade, or you can purchase a clay blade in the clay section of craft stores. I also used a food processor for grinding up the clay, this makes conditioning easier. And last, Mix Quick, a clay conditioning agent, and or clay softener oil is great to have on hand. For tools, a ruler and a knife is about all you ll need. 3

4 Getting Started The first steps are to chop up the clay and get it ready for conditioning. In the top photo, a small amount of each color is cut into small chunks. These chunks are placed in the food processor bowl, and first I pulse them, to get them bouncing. That way they won t get stuck against the sides of the bowl and risk breaking the blade unit. Grind for about 30 seconds, then check to see if the pieces stick together easily. (left photo) If they do not, add a few drops of softening oil, or even vegetable oil will work; about 1 or 2 drops per ounce of clay. Continue blending for about another 30 seconds. The friction of the blades help to warm the clay. 4

5 Conditioning Clay TIP: Adding oil or Mix Quick to the clay helps to hydrate dry clay. Oil moistens the clay but doesn t strengthen it. MQ moistens and also makes the clay stronger. Spill the crumbs of clay out on your table, and squeeze the clay together into a log. Begin to roll this clay out into a long coil. Fold the coil up and squeeze them all together again. Roll out again, and again, until the clay is nice and warm, and sticks to itself. In the small inset photo above, you see how the coil broke apart, or exploded. This means the clay needs to be conditioned further. This would be a real problem in a Millefiori cane, so you don t want this to happen. With polymers, the plasticizers in the clay are at rest when the clay is in the package, and those oils need to be awakened and activated again to make the clay pliable. You ll see later in this tut that I should have added more oil to some of the colors. More about this in the next steps. 5

6 Well, this took me all afternoon, but I am happy to have all these colors to work with. I also had a darker green, and purple, but because some colors change and are a lot darker after they are baked, I opted for the lighter green, and substituted the light blue for the purple. You ll soon learn what colors work well for cane work. 6

7 These steps are a simplified way to get a color gradation, or a fading of one color into the next. There are several ways to accomplish this, but this method works well and is quick. Start by rolling out a pad of three colors, in this case, the cool colors in my selection. This is the #1 setting on the pasta machine, or about 4 mm in thickness. Fold the circles in half, then squeeze the edges together. I don t overlap them too much, just enough to get them to fit together. Notice on the lighter blue, I have trimmed the edge, so the folded edge of the dark blue will fit up against it. Squeeze the layers together. Trim the edges of this so it will fit through the rollers on the pasta machine or roll with a rolling pin. Then fold this in half as shown below, right. 7

8 Here I am repeating those same steps with the warm colors. Now, the yellow and red looks like they are going to behave in this top photo, but as you can see below, as I ran it through the pasta machine, they did break apart on the edges. This is frustrating, but not impossible to work with. For each sample, I ran it through the pasta machine again/ folded again, ran it through again probably about 4 times for each on setting #3. This is embedding the colors together. In the last photo below, the edges are trimmed so the pieces are in a rectangle. 8

9 Layers TIP: Each clay should be the same consistency, having one soft and the others firm will not give you good results. To create those layers, we ll fold this long sheet up into an accordion or fan fold. Fold the clay up, then pick up the long piece and fold back and forth until you get all the clay folded, as you see in the photos. It doesn t matter if you end with a shorter piece. (see the blue clay) In this photo to the right, you can see that the medium color is flexible, the red and the yellow are a bit more dry, so they cracked on the edges. It s not too bad, and I can feel it and know it will be ok, (what I can tell is that the clay WILL bond to itself) otherwise this cane will break apart in the reduction process and that will ruin a whole cane design. You want to absolutely avoid that by having the clay soft and pliable before you begin this process. 9

10 Now we ll take that stack of folded clay and start to press it all together into a cane. For this, you can use your hands, or a rolling pin, or a brayer. Roll on all sides by rolling, turn a quarter turn, then roll again. This is pressing all those layers together. You aren t stretching it out, not yet, but you do want all the layers to be bonded. Then mark the cane into thirds. You will use your tissue blade or a knife to cut the sections. 10

11 TIP: If one clay is a lot softer than the others, it will be pushed out of the cane design faster than the others. This will lead to a distorted design. You want consistent firmness in all the clays. So here are the three slices of each color, laid out. We ll take two blues, and one of the yellow red combo, and sandwich them as you see here. Notice that the yellow, the lightest color of the warm combo, is at the bottom of the design, with the darkest of the cool colors, the blue. This is intentional, you ll see why in a bit. Squeeze the layers together so they are firmly bonded to each other, this then becomes your secondary cane, a result of the two previous canes with the layers in them. We aren t stretching this out yet, (reduction) we re just sticking the three layers together. 11

12 Now you can see me squeezing the cane together, since I am going to be rolling it, it will have to go from square to round. This also curves the edges of the design. In the lower photo, I am rolling the coil out on the table, trying to keep it uniform in size. 12

13 I will continue to roll this out showing the size compared to a pencil in this photo. Then, keeping the red line as my marker, I will begin to flatten one edge of the roll, to make a teardrop shape. I do this by pressing down with my finger or thumb along just one edge of the roll. Then, I will run my fingers along the cane to make it nice and smooth. In the second photo above, you can see that long red line, that was because there was a tiny crumb of red on the coil. As I rolled it, it stretched out like that. It is not a problem, it will blend right into the design. That s one nice thing about Millefiori, you don t need to worry about dirty clay. It just won t show. Finally, I cut the coil into 3 equal sections. 13

14 Now, I will take those three teardrop shaped coils and place them as you see above. Notice all the red at the top, that was my marker line to make sure the teardrop shape didn t get twisted. By keeping the red line at the point of the teardrop, that allows the whole coil to keep the same basic configuration of colors. Squeeze the coil again, we re going to need it to be round for the next steps. Since I am only making a small amount, I will cut off about 2 and save the rest for another project. 14

15 If you forget, like I did, you can add a strip of a color of clay to the outside of the black; do this before you reduce the cane. It will blend in and form a thin line. See the red line below. This will allow you to keep the design straight. Next I will wrap this whole coil with black clay. To do this, I roll the black clay as thin as possible, this results in a very fine line of black. I don t wan it thick, just an outline. So, this was #6 on the pasta machine, or you can roll it with a rolling pin and get it as thin as possible without it tearing. Lay the black out, and trim the edges so it s the same width as the coil is tall. Begin rolling the black around the colors. When you get to the point where the edges will meet, trim the extra black away so the edges come together. 15 What I forgot to do and should have done, was leave a fine space with the red showing again, but I forgot. This makes it difficult to keep track of where the tip of the teardrop was. See the red line? I should have marked the cane.

16 Back to rolling the cane again, once again comparing it to the pencil to show size. After the cane is small enough, I can pinch the edge down, where the red color is, to form a teardrop again; this time, the teardrop contains three components instead of just one. When you see it reduced way down, you see how neat that design is! And notice how the yellow stands out against the blue. If I would have reversed it and had the red next to the dark blue, the design wouldn t have showed up nearly as well. 16

17 Now, for applying these slices for scales, they will be arranged as you see here. Reduce your cane in different sizes, a tiny section, a little larger one, and so on, until toward the top of your work the scales will be the largest. They still won t be much over 10 mm wide, but they will be significantly larger than they are at the bottom of the tail. Also, stagger the scales so they line up like bricks, overlapping the gap between the scales below. To apply to a baked mermaid tail, you will first brush on liquid clay add a very thin layer of whatever color you outlined your scales with. In my case, that is black. So I would apply a thin layer of black clay to the tail, then lay the scales down into that clay. This will hold them firmly in place. 17

18 An Easier Method TIP: Fimo colors bake darker sometimes; the reds, the purples, etc, so be aware of that when you are selecting the colors for your cane. Mix white in to lighten a color to avoid this. It will look more like it does in the unbaked state. Now that was fun, and a good bit of work. You can get a similar effect with a lot less work. Shown here are the scraps from my first process. Using the cool colors first, I roll them all together, and fold and roll again. Don t do it too much, or the colors will become too diluted. 18

19 Next I will wrap that blue cane with the reds, by rolling the clay out into a thick layer. Since there is no proper pattern in this design, I won t need the marker line. But, in the photos above, I am leaving that gap to demonstrate how that works. By leaving a little gap between the black edges, that red shows through, then as I roll it out, it forms a thin red line. This would indicate where the top of the design is. Just a little tip for you. 19

20 TIP: One more tip, see that line in the red variegated clay? (Marked by the arrow.) That is the result of rolling the coil and the cut edge of that top layer makes a mark on the bottom layer, showing you exactly where you need to cut it for a good fit. The cut edges will butt up together tightly. These scales aren t as dynamic a design as the first sample was, but it was infinitely easier to do too. So just experiment with it and have some fun! Here is an example of what I did with the rest of the cane. The center design is a round cane of the scale shown on this page. It looks different as the center of this design, doesn t it! 20

21 All Finished Well, that s it! I hope you learned a few tricks along the way. And something I wanted to point out to you, in the layout above, do you notice how the dark edges of the scales line up to form a secondary design? So the dark blue forms dots by having the edges of the scales meet up. Also, you can see the yellow twists to one side. I can alternate the scales to emphasize this, or keep them all curving in the same direction. I hope you have fun doing your own Millefiori design! Hugs, Deb Deb Wood /Enchanted Hearts All Rights Reserved 21 Copyright Notice and Disclaimer: The instructions herein are copyright protected and any copying, forwarding, reposting or reprinting of any kind is strictly forbidden. This includes but is not limited to electronic duplication. Any copyright infringement is punishable by law. The information within this document is provided only to those who have been granted permission by the site owner. This class is brought to you in good faith and in no way does the author accept any responsibility for error, accident or injury to participants due to the instructions presented in this document.