Transcript for Candy Cane

pcPolyzine Video Tutorial Series—Transcript Polymer Clay Candy Cane Twisters Polymer clay is a really weird material. It's really cool. You can do so many things with it. I would never think that you can do spirals from polymer clay. It's amazing. You can use them in something else, I don't know, Christmas tree decoration?

Hi everyone and welcome to Mandarin Ducky's Creative Corner. Thank you for joining us today.

Today we are going to talk about winter holidays and all the beautiful little things you can enjoy during these holidays. I discovered a wonderful tutorial on pcPolyzine website on how to make Christmas candy canes from polymer clay, and it's designed by Dave Snyder, thank you Dave for that. It's a really wonderful tutorial, easy to make.

So, first part of our tutorial will be a Candy Cane tutorial and then of course as always when you work with canes you've got lots of cane leftovers and I think we could try and make some hair decorations for winter holidays which can be cute and funny. So, let's not waste our time and let us start.

We will need one pack of white translucent and some bits of black and red clay. We will also need a tissue blade and clay extruder with round discs. You might need to use strong and flexible clay like Kato Polyclay, FIMO, Pardo Professional, or Premo by Sculpey.

For the second part of our tutorials we will need some sticks. You can use rounded chopsticks, knitting needles or some bigger needle tools. Make sure they are oven-safe and good for baking.

Let's start by conditioning our white translucent clay. Then we will need to mix some red clay with a bit of black clay to make it darker. Or, use dark red if you have it already. So, remember to condition your clay properly. When it's done, place it into your extruder and use a disc with the bigger holes to extrude the clay. Extrude your clay, cut your clay ropes off, and place them on the side. We will use them later.

Now it's time to extrude some more clay but this time I will use the disc with smaller holes.

I will start placing my red clay ropes on the white cane—one thicker rope first, then, I will secure it into right position, then two thin ones. And again, one thick, two thin, until the cane is decorated all around. And remember, you want the red clay to overlap the length of the big cane, so when you reduce it, red will have room to grow.

Adding this step was my own idea. I decided to wrap my cane in cling film to secure everything in its place. This way I think it is easier to start reducing this cane. So now we can start reducing our cane until it is about the same thickness as a regular pencil. If it is getting too long, cut it into halves and continue reducing one of the parts. When you achieve the right thickness, this is where you can start making your candy canes. You can also twist your cane to make your candies look even more realistic.

Dave Snyder gives some amazing suggestions and variation ideas in his tutorial on pcPolyzine website. So make sure you check it out if you want to know more about candy cane technique.

But I will go further and I will try and reduce it even more. This is the second step of our tutorial and I will teach you guys how to decorate your hair with a candy cane. So maybe some of you already guessed that we are going to make some hair twisters. Let’s experiment with different length and thickness and see what happens.

I am starting here with thickest clay roll and thickest base. For the base you can use any long, rounded object that is safe to bake in the oven like brushes, cooking spoons, rounded wood or metal sticks. So once again, you grab one end of your clay roll and secure it on the top of your ©2012. Copyright by Aniko Kolesnikova for pcPolyzine.com. All rights reserved.

stick. Then just turn the stick and the clay roll will twist around it automatically. And don't forget to secure your end bit as well.

Be creative and experiment with different colors, lengths and thickness of your clay ropes. Also, try different size sticks, spoons, or brushes.

I wanted my cane twisters to have some little decorations on the end of it and that's why I made little holes on the end of each twister. You can also create a little loop from the actual clay rope if you want.

Because I am wearing pink today I decided to have fun and make some pink twisters as well and I also used a thinner wooden base for it. This time I decided to make twists closer to each other. I will make one smaller and one bigger twister for my own hair. This is my very first attempt to make these twister things so some of them may not even work but I guess we will find out.

Now it's time to bake and it can be very tricky with placing your twisters on the tray. You can use fiberfill base if you want or you can place your sticks on tray borders and secure them with some scrap clay. Now it's time to bake our twisters. I used FIMO Classic and translucent for this tutorial and that's why I will bake my clay for 30 minutes in 110 Celsius or 230 Fahrenheit degrees.

After I bake my twisters, I put them straight under the cold water. When you take them off your stick, try to loosen them by rotating. Then when they are detached to touch, you can pull them off.

This is amazing how clay can be so flexible and on the other hand, it's very hard. I've never done anything like this from clay before, so for me it's like a miracle. And if you remember, I created little holes on the bottom side of my twisters. So now I will make sure holes are big enough and I will attach some little beads to them.

Well, I think the pink ones look really, really nice and they really match my top and I think we did a really good job with them.

What I discovered about these things is the thinner you make them and longer you make them the better they hold your hair. And also, it's not only about the thickness of the actual clay sausage, but it's also the actual diameter of the spiral, because this one which I made, it's too big, it's too huge. It requires a big amount of hair. Because my hair is really, really smooth, it's not like curly, it doesn't really hold anything. My hair is just a nightmare for me. It's really hard to maintain. So these just slide off. And these are too heavy especially when you do some kind of decorations. So what I would suggest is to make them thinner, to make the actual sausage thinner, to make the spirals longer and to use like a smaller brush or some kind of little sticks.

And also, if you're planning to decorate them on the bottom, I think feathers or something really, really light and tiny will be the best idea.

I really like how they turned out so flexible but on the other hand they are just so strong, you can bang them on the window or anything and they just don’t break, don’t crack and this is amazing.

The other thing with the candy cane technique is that if you reduce it too small so it looks like this, I suggest to use just white clay and red or red translucent because otherwise two colors blend together because of the scale, you know, the stripes are little, very tiny.

But anyway, this tutorial gave me a lot of knowledge about how thick you need to make them, how big, how wide, and it actually made me know, and actually I discovered, that polymer clay is a really weird material. It's really cool. You can do so many things with it. I would never think that you can do spirals from polymer clay. It's amazing. You can use them in something else, I Š2012. Copyright by Aniko Kolesnikova for pcPolyzine.com. All rights reserved.

don't know, Christmas tree decoration? I think that one would be quite cool, even better than for the hair. So, yea, if you created some thick ones that don’t fit your hair, you can always put them on your Christmas tree. I don’t have a Christmas tree yet.

Thank you for your attention and I am wishing you good luck in making nice, lovely twisters for your beautiful hair. I’ll see you guys soon in the next videos.

Bye!! ######

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©2012. Copyright by Aniko Kolesnikova for pcPolyzine.com. All rights reserved.