Sunflower Plaque Tutorial Part IV     -     Petal Cane

In this section I'll be working with the yellow blend to form a petal cane.

Step 50

In this picture you can see the yellow-to-gold blend along with the canes/leftovers from what I've made so far.  Basically, I'm going to make a feather cane that looks almost exactly like the leaf cane that was made with the green blend; however I'm going to demonstrate another way to produce this effect.

Step 51

First, I cut the blend into 1 1/2 inch strips.

Step 52

Then, I layered them one on top of another to form a stack that looks like this.

Step 53

Here, I've flattened the stack by rolling it with my acrylic rod.

Step 54

Then I rolled it through the pasta machine on the thickest setting.

Step 55

Next, I cut along the strip every two inches, keeping them in order from dark-to-light.

Step 56

I begin stacking them as shown.  Note that I've kept the ragged edges... as I said in the beginning, I'm going for an abstract, painted look so the ragged edges will offer a bit of distortion which will keep the cane from looking sharp or geometric.

Step 57

Here, I'm stacking the remaining strips halfway over the first set.

Step 58

Continue stacking until all of the strips have been used.

Step 59

Here's what the finished stack looks like.

Step 60

Now I'm going to cut the stack in half lengthwise.  Since it's 2 inches wide, I'll be cutting at the 1 inch mark.

Step 61

This picture shows the two halves.

Step 62

When placed back-to-back they look like this.

Step 63

Begin compressing it . . .

Step 64

...and reducing.

Step 65

This is what the reduced cane looks like.  I pinched the top and bottom of the cane end on the right to form a petal shape.

Sunflower Plaque Tutorial Part V

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