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Description
This year's clay mood started with techniques to create different kinds of beads and pendants and such, to be turned into jewelry.

This technique is basically pressing one colour clay into another with a stamp and creating prints of that stamp. Let me explain how it is done

First of you blend different colours together with the aid of a pasta machine and a technique called the Skinner blend (you can google that, there are great tutorials online). Going from light to dark always works well (like the white-pink-burgundy, yellow-pink-burgundy, white-blue-dark blue examples here).

When you have your're blend you turn it one quarter (so either the light or dark side goes in the machine first) and put it through the machine again, making the blend as thin as doable. The you roll up the blend, preferably starting with the light side so this becomes the core of your cane (though the other way round may be interesting as well).

Then you put the cane on its length side and flatten it with something smooth like an acrylic plate used for acrylic stamps you can get at most hobby shops (you can also use these for other clay techniques so owning one is always handy). Flatten the cane to about 5mm or 1/5th of an inch (you don't want it to become too thin or we could have just put the lot through the pasta machine again).

Now you can take you stamp(s) and press them into the clay. What's important here is that the stamps are very deep and inflexible, so Indian wooden carved stamps (thick lines) or wooden blocks with metal stamps (thin lines) are the stamps to go to. I couldn't practice these techniques until I got them.

And then the magic is done. You take a long flexible clay knife and carefully scrape of the top layer of the clay, to reveal the patterns beneath (turn the scraps upside down and you can use these as well, to cover op round clay beads and such). If you can, cut the clay in half and stick the halves together to have pattern on both sides, great for dangling earrings.

And that's that

I have to note that the cushion-like pendant and earrings in the black-yellow-pink-purple are done in a technique called Hidden Magic, which is an extension on the technique I described but a bit more complicated (you really need photo s of that), so best to google that if you want to try it.

Description
This year's clay mood started with techniques to create different kinds of beads and pendants and such, to be turned into jewelry.

This technique is basically pressing one colour clay into another with a stamp and creating prints of that stamp. Let me explain how it is done

First of you blend different colours together with the aid of a pasta machine and a technique called the Skinner blend (you can google that, there are great tutorials online). Going from light to dark always works well (like the white-pink-burgundy, yellow-pink-burgundy, white-blue-dark blue examples here).

When you have your're blend you turn it one quarter (so either the light or dark side goes in the machine first) and put it through the machine again, making the blend as thin as doable. The you roll up the blend, preferably starting with the light side so this becomes the core of your cane (though the other way round may be interesting as well).

Then you put the cane on its length side and flatten it with something smooth like an acrylic plate used for acrylic stamps you can get at most hobby shops (you can also use these for other clay techniques so owning one is always handy). Flatten the cane to about 5mm or 1/5th of an inch (you don't want it to become too thin or we could have just put the lot through the pasta machine again).

Now you can take you stamp(s) and press them into the clay. What's important here is that the stamps are very deep and inflexible, so Indian wooden carved stamps (thick lines) or wooden blocks with metal stamps (thin lines) are the stamps to go to. I couldn't practice these techniques until I got them.

And then the magic is done. You take a long flexible clay knife and carefully scrape of the top layer of the clay, to reveal the patterns beneath (turn the scraps upside down and you can use these as well, to cover op round clay beads and such). If you can, cut the clay in half and stick the halves together to have pattern on both sides, great for dangling earrings.

And that's that

I have to note that the cushion-like pendant and earrings in the black-yellow-pink-purple are done in a technique called Hidden Magic, which is an extension on the technique I described but a bit more complicated (you really need photo s of that), so best to google that if you want to try it.