[Post Tutorial] Bettina Welker's Pixelated Retro Blend Cane

Happy Monday!  How was your weekend.  Mine was great - I was able to organize my craft room a little, with only a couple of storage bins to go through.  I still have to decide whether to do an inventory of all my supplies but it's too tedious to count or weigh my beads plus I wanna hang out, watch a movie and play video games with my hubby.  

As long as it's below my budget, we are fine with that (wink! wink!)

Have you heard of Ms. Bettina Welker's "Pixelated Retro Blend?"  Here's a photo from her website with a FREE tutorial.  Thank you for sharing your "aha moment" technique with us, Bettina.  Much appreciated!



photo credit from HERE



We had our local guild meeting last Saturday where we talked about this technique and when I got home, I took out my clays and Makin's extruder and tried it out.  The first thing I did was to figure out which colors to use.  I thought of using Premo Purple and Turquoise and make "in-between" color blends.  Bettina suggested having 5 different shades plus black and white.  In making different shades, I used a cookie cutter to measure equal amounts of clay, cut 4 circles and replacing some circles with the other color, then mixed them up.  The shades where too subtle or "close" to each other which is why I will use colors that would have a better contrast next time.   

The other problem I had was that my cookie cutter was a tad bigger than the Makins barrel.  I tried to use the end of the barrel to cut the circles out and it worked. however, be careful not to distort it upon taking it out.  Following Bettina's tutorial, I arranged the circles as follows:  white, 2 colored circles, black, 2 colored circles then repeat until the desired length to fit the barrel.  I placed the purple side first, as per the instructions.

To extrude the clay, I used 2.5 mm circle disc and extruded a good length of clay.  This was the pattern that was formed (kindly refer to photo below).  Then, I decided to slice thin veneers to cover my small altoid tin.  I applied a thin layer of black clay then the veneer.  This was baked in the oven for about 20 mins, sanded and buffed to a medium sheen. 

Pixelated Retro Blend Cane
Bettina Welker

So what do you think?

I still have to finish the bottom part of the tin but I think I will keep it plain.  There are rooms for improvement for me - my canes have been slightly distorted when slicing - I blame the heat over here because it softens the clay too much.

Thanks for stopping by the blog and have a wonderful week!

See you soon!

♥  michelle  ♥