Cold cut flowers

Jenny Patterson slices extruded flower canes after they are fired on PolymerClayDaily

Maintaining the shape of extruded polymer clay flower canes as you reduce them is nearly impossible. At a recent gathering, Minnesota’s Jenny Patterson reminded me of a clever workaround.

She extrudes her canes and slices them after they’re cured!

Jenny sells at big shows (she’ll be at the Balloon show in Albuquerque) so her production skills are well honed.

She cuts the cured extrusions once they’re cool or slightly re-warms them to make them pliable depending on the brand of clay. Try it both ways to see what your clay prefers. She punches a hole in each thin slice with hole punch pliers.

Her flowers are made using extruded stacks of disks of clay colors (a la Bettina Welker) with her own extruder disk designs.


We’ll be talking about several newly learned lessons (and cool new tools that make them happen) in this week’s StudioMojo. A week off the grid did my heart and my brain good. Come see why.

Managing the holidays

Cynthia Tinapple kvetches about holiday production on PolymerClayDaily.com

Is your workspace littered with earring parts? My collection of “possibilities” was getting impossibly large as it outgrew snack, sandwich, quart, and gallon baggies.

Cynthia Tinapple kvetches about holiday production on PolymerClayDaily.com

Finding the pairs among all the parts was soothing. But the steps after that became less and less interesting. Finding findings. Finding reading glasses and pliers. Assembling. Are we done yet?

Punching cards and mounting, labeling, pricing.  My back hurts. This is tedious.

My hat is off to all who repeatedly grind through these chores, particularly at this time of year. Keep it up! I’ll cheer you on from the sidelines. A blog, a newsletter, and a few bowls a year are all I can manage.

I’m just showing off while I can. I feel your pain.

Remind me again why we do this. Oh yeah, colors, patterns, shapes. That part never loses its appeal.

I laugh when I watch jewelry appear with a finger snap on TikTok. Mountains of packages disappear under a shower of digital glitter. In your dreams.