Save the Date! Jan Montarsi Demo in April
Join us on Saturday, April 2 when Jan Montarsi joins us via Zoom to demo his Minimal Waste Kaleidoscope Cane. Jan says:
Many of us have experienced the effects of the recent clay shortages, and while we are currently seeing clay come back to the craft stores and online, most of us still prefer to conserve our clay and not to create unnecessary scrap. But many of us make quite a bit of scrap when we’re making canes and reducing them. The most waste I have seen was someone making components 2” long to build a cane 5” to 6” in diameter and reducing it to a 1-inch finished cane. The results were 1.5 pounds of scrap and 8 inches of usable but distorted cane. There are artists who can pull this off, but it is a feat of strength and patience.
I have made canes that are so huge that I will probably never use it all in my lifetime as it sits there in storage drying up and will need much work to revive it when I do try to use it. More is not always better.
My goal with cane making is to work with only enough clay for what I need in my project and to have little or no cane left over. After all, we work hard to slice canes thinly to maximize the coverage we get from them. Making a large amount of scrap in the process defeats that purpose.
And, since most of us crafters are not production artists, we don’t need huge canes. We need a cane to complete a few projects, then we want to move on to our next design. Another use for small canes is to test colors for a bigger project before investing clay and time to a color palette we may not be happy with in the end.
Jan’s Bio
Jan Montarsi has been working with polymer clay for 12 years. An avid Polymer clay enthusiast and experimenter. He has been published in polymer clay magazines and has shared tutorials on YouTube. Known for Using Mica clays and extrusions, Jan obtains sparkling results. He also has some novel bail making ideas. A former IPCA Americas president and board member and member of his local Dayton Area Polymer Clay Guild and very active in the polymer clay community. Jan teaches private classes and workshops, live as well as online in several formats. Jan is the inventor of BlendAngles blending Templates as well As The Create Template. He has taught internationally. Jan is currently on the Create Along Design team.
Youtube
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZTsjxCPryhcr-Yik14MxTw
Personal FB page
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1799658219
Blendangles FB page
https://www.facebook.com/JemboxDesigns/
