New to Polymer Clay, want to make Millefleur.

[soapturtle]

I have a couple of chunks of Sculpey III and want to make some millefleur beads with it but can't find any tute's online to help me out.  I beheld the power of google and it let me down.

Anyone know of any good links or even a good book for this?

Thanks!

[pickleparty]

Try this place...

http://www.skygrazer.com/polymerclay/resources/lessonlinks.htm#HOWTO_CANE

or www.polymerclaycent ral.com

I've also seen it called "millefioiri" so maybe try googling that.  Good luck!

[Diane B.]

Hi, and welcome!

First, let me ask if you want to make flower "canes," which you then take many slices from and put onto a bead or other surface?  Millefiori is an Italian word that means "thousand flowers" ...it started in glass making, where long pulls of glass in different colors were placed beside each other (usually in flower patterns), then thick slices were cut from the glass flower canes and put onto more glass to make beads, paperweights, etc.

The term millefiori is used differently by different polymer clayers though, so you might just mean the general technique of making a cane (with any image), then cutting it into lengths and recombining those lengths with themselves to make a pattern of many small idential images.

Regardless of which one you want to do, check out these pages at my site for loads of lessons and info about making canes (many of which will include cutting lengths then rejoining them, or joining them with other canes):

( http://www.glassattic.com/polymer/canes-whatarethey.htm )

http://www.glassattic.com/polymer/Canes--general.htm (cane making & general info)
http://www.glassattic.com/polymer/canes--reducing.htm (making canes smaller)
http://www.glassattic.com/polymer/canes--instructions.htm (specific cane patterns)


HTH, and show us what you come up with!



Diane B.
GlassAttic....polym er clay "encyclopedia" http://glassattic.com/polymer/contents.htm
little bit'o photosharing: http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/dianeatglassattic/my_photos

[soapturtle]

Thank you both and Diane that is EXACTLY what I meant.  I want to make the flower canes so I can smooth them over beads and have flowered beads.

[Diane B.]

Diane that is EXACTLY what I meant.  I want to make the flower canes so I can smooth them over beads and have flowered beads.

Okay! 

But ...you can make flower canes and put slices all over a bead without actually doing the "millefiori technique."  Again, there may be semantic differences between the way people use the term millefiori, but I just wanted to point out that if you make a flower cane, you can do lots of different things with it.

For example, you can cut slices from it and place them on a raw bead of any shape and color, leaving spaces in between so that the background color shows through (...or if the background color of the slice is the same color as the bead, then the slice background will disappear and the flowers will look like they're floating on the bead).
...Or you can cut slices from it and cover the whole raw bead with them (overlapping or butting the slices).

But to do the millefiori technique, you'd make a flower cane (or any other cane), lengthen it by "reducing" (rolling and/or pulling), then cut it into several equal lengths (usually 3-6) and place those next to each other, finally rolling those into a new final cane which has multiple images.  Those steps can be repeated as often as you want and the images will just get smaller and smaller. 
(This technique will result in just one cane too, but it won't be a cane of one flower as above ... it'll be a cane with many flowers.)

Flower canes are also popular to do with "translucent and opaque" clays in the same cane, so when slices are cut really thin and applied to a base bead, any translucent areas of the slices will "disappear" and the background color of the base bead will show through.  Then the images (usually created with opaque clay) really look like they're floating!

If you want to check out some lessons and examples of flower canes, look on this page:
http://www.glassattic.com/polymer/canes--instructions.htm
(... click on Flowers...)
...And if you want to make the flower canes as translucent-opaque canes, look under the subcategory called Translucent Canes.

Info on various ways to apply cane slices to beads can be found on this page, if you're interested:
http://www.glassattic.com/polymer/beads.htm
...and more on millefiori as a pattern and as a technique on this page:
http://www.glassattic.com/polymer/Canes--general.htm
(... click on Millefiori...)


HTH, and have fun with them!


Diane B.
GlassAttic....polym er clay "encyclopedia" http://glassattic.com/polymer/contents.htm
little bit'o photosharing: http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/dianeatglassattic/my_photos