Cane Work & Jewelry Kit

It bakes semi-transparent — layered with opaque clay, it creates depth (the illusion of stone, skin, or water) that opaque clay cannot. Mixed with a little color, it is the "faux jade," "faux turquoise," and the depth of realistic miniature food. Translucent is the polymer-clay artist's secret for realism and depth.

A tool (a syringe-like barrel with shaped discs) that forces clay into a consistent shaped log (a square, a triangle, a star) — the building blocks of complex canes (the Klimt cane, the geometric). Hand-rolling a perfectly consistent shape is nearly impossible; the extruder does it. It is the cane-builder's precision tool.

Rigid, thin, sharp blades (originally for tissue sampling) that slice a cane cleanly without distorting the pattern — a flexible knife deforms the slice. A set of tissue blades (rigid and flexible) is how you cut thin, even cane slices for application. The blade is the cane-slicing tool; the rigidity is the whole point.

Wet-sand the cured bead (400 to 2000 grit) to remove blemishes, buff to a sheen (a denim cloth or a buffing wheel), and optionally varnish (a water-based gloss) for a glassy finish. The finishing is what separates a "made" bead from a "polished" one — the sand-and-buff is 40% of the work. The finished millefiori bead looks like glass.