Step-by-step tutorial with lots of pictures of the caning process.

Make gorgeously detailed butterfly canes using a neat trick with a simple old credit/gift card. This tutorial involves some basic knowledge of skinner blending, click here for a walkthrough for how to do that. After making these butterfly canes, you will be rewarded by seeing just how much magic you can work with your hands to turn your colors of clay into life. First, we are going to start with the top wing and then do the bottom wing. So let’s get started!

Create Top Wing of Polymer Clay Butterfly Cane

Step #1: Create Black and White Striped Cane

To start off, condition 14 grams of black clay and 9.33 grams of white clay. Then roll each color on the thickest setting of your pasta machine (for me, it’s 0) to make rectangular sheets. Stack the white sheet on top of the longer black sheet. Trim off the hanging black clay. Cut it in half and stack them on top of one another to create a black and white striped cane.

Next, take the remaining black clay you trimmed off earlier, and run it through the pasta machine’s thin setting number 5. Attach this thin black sheet to the white side of your striped cane.

Step #2: Create Polymer Clay Gradient Cane

For step 2, condition 7g black clay, 11.2g of each of the dark blue, purple and teal clays and 5.6g of white clay. Feel free to switch out these colors with your own configurations. After that, create a skinner blend arrangement as depicted below. Making sure the pieces are held tight together, run through the thickest setting of the pasta machine to also help the piece adhere to one another. Then fold the sheet and run through your pasta machine – repeat this several times until well-blended.

Next, fold the sheet in half for vertical stretching. Run it through the pasta machine lowering the thickness setting a couple times until you get it thin, on my machine, it’s the 5th setting.

After you get a very long and thin gradient sheet, make a gradient cane. Start on the light end and 1 inch folds and keep folding like an accordion. If you have trouble with air bubbles, instead of folding you can slice inch rectangles and continuously stack to get a similar effect.

Step #3: Create Texture with Polymer Clay Caning Hack Using a Card

For step 3, stretch and pull the striped cane so that it’s more similar in size to the gradient loaf. This is to make the proportions more similar for the next step. After that, place the striped cane on top of the gradient cane. Now we’re going to use a neat little card trick, are you ready?

Next, take a thick old store credit card or rewards card and slowly press downward. It’s okay if the clay resists or gets a bit distorted, that’s what you want to happen. Try to go as far as you can, without cutting all the way through. But if you cut all the way through, you can still reattach the pieces together. After that, pinch the gradient end so that you get more of a triangle. A thicker card may give you a nicer more exaggerated effect.

Now you have completed your top wing, and it should look something look this.

Create Bottom Wing of Butterfly Clay Cane

Step #1: Create Gradient Clay Cane

For step 1 of the bottom wing, condition 7g each white, black, teal, purple and dark blue clay. Create a skinner blend arrangement, and run through your pasta machine until well-blended.

After creating the gradient sheet, fold the sheet in half. Run it through the pasta machine lowering the thickness setting a couple times until you get to a thin setting like number 5.

After making a long skinny gradient sheet, make a gradient loaf with 1 inch accordion folds. After that, take an acrylic roller to flatten the loaf to about half a centimeter thick.

Step #2: Add Black and White Polymer Clay Layers

For step 2, condition 28g of black and 14g of white clay. Run both of them through the pasta machine using a thick level, like setting 0 of your pasta machine. Sandwich the gradient loaf with black clay. After that, add a white layer to the bottom. Then run the remainder of the black clay into the pasta machine using a thin setting like setting 5 and add this to the white layer.

Now your polymer clay butterfly cane should have something that looks like this.

Step #3: Create Butterfly Speckled Pattern Using Strips of Black and White Clay

Next, place the cane onto the tile or surface, with the thin black layer side facing down against the table top. After that, run a sheet of white and black clay through setting 0 of the pasta machine. From both the white and black clay, cut out strips in various widths.

After cutting out randomly sized white and black strips, create the look of a random pattern of white specs to the wings. To do this, place white and black strips on top of the gradient cane in your desired arrangement. Trim off the excess clay.

Step #4: Create Clay Texture with Card

For step 4, divide your loaf into 6 or 7 sections. They can be even or vary in width. You can make light marks on your loaf before doing this. Then with an old card. Slowly press down into the clay. Again, try to go as far as you can, without cutting all the way through. 

Step #5: Create Bullseye Canes and Make Cool Butterfly Wing Texture

Next, let’s work on filling in the rest of the bottom wing. You should now have about 21g of each of your two darkest colors.

Start by making a gradient with your darker colors that’s offset about an inch. Run it through your pasta machine until well-blended. Fold the sheet in half. And continuously run it through the pasta machine decreasing the thickness until you’re at setting 5 or 6.

Next, start rolling from the lightest to darkest end to create a bulls eye cane. The center may start to ooze out, but that’s okay. Just push those fellers right back in after you finish rolling.

After create a bullseye cane, reduce the cane and make 2 large pieces, 2 medium pieces and 3 smaller pieces. There’s no exact measurement for this.

Then pinch your 2 largest canes to make a teardrop shape.

After that, assemble the canes together into a bundle in no particular order, but have the teardrops point in the direction where you will make the point of a triangle. Compress and fuse the pieces together. Pinch in the direction of the teardrop shapes to create a triangular cane.

Next take the gradient cane and push into it to make it curve slightly. And fit the two pieces together. Compress and reduce the cane to fuse the components together.

Now you have another complete detailed butterfly wing! After that, you have the option of slicing each of your wings in half to assemble into a full butterfly cane. But keeping them separate like this may give you more options for variations and makes it easier to reduce to other sizes.

I hope y’all enjoyed this tutorial and have lots of fun making your own cool butterfly wing patterns. Happy caning!

Here’s a video version of this tutorial to supplement your reading.

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Playlist on Polymer Clay Beginner Tutorials

Playlist on Polymer Clay Cane Tutorials

A beginner polymer clay tutorial for making easy, but gorgeous feather canes in step by step walkthrough. You’ll be surprised relatively simple the steps are!

Step 1:

How to Create Simple Gradient Blend

Start off by creating a navy, pink and white gradient blend. Each of the 3 colors weigh about 12 grams, but I would recommend using a little more like 16 grams if you want thicker leaf sections.

I roughly cut out triangles for the skinner blend and piece them together. This shows that you don’t have to measure out perfect triangles to create a skinner blend. Then I run it through the pasta machine multiple times until it is well-blended.

Step 2:

Convert Clay Gradient Sheet to Roll

Step 3:

Transform Gradient Roll to Plug Shape

Step 4:

Transform to Gradient Rectangle Cane

The reason why we turned the gradient into a plug, then a rectangle, is so that we would be able to stretch the rectangle vertically to get a tall gradient sheet as opposed to a wide one.

Start the reduction process using a series of pinching motions across the entire surface of the rectangle cane. I also like to press it down onto a flat surface to help keep the sides flat. And pushing down any bumps that occur. 

After you get to about 1.5 inch in width, you may use a roller to help flatten it a bit more until the clay sheet is about 1/4 of an inch deep. Next, run it through the largest setting of your pasta machine. You can reduce the thickness if you want the sections of the feather to be thinner. 

Step 5:

Create Feather Cane Components

Next, grab a sheet of white or black clay and run it through the 6th setting of your pasta machine to get a long sheet of clay. This will be the barbs of your feather. Being careful to avoid air bubbles. Set your gradient blend on top of the thin sheet and cut off the excess clay from the sides. 

Then you want to grab the main body and place it over another thin white sheet so that the top and bottom of the gradient blend is covered with white clay. Cut off any imperfections from the sides. I use an xacto knife to pop any air bubbles and my fingers to smoothen the texture.

Next, divide your clay into 8 equal sections. Miraculously, my sheet ended up being 8 inches in length which made it easy to mark and slice my cane components. You clay component should look something like this.

Step 6:

Compile Feather Cane Components into Staircase

Set it down on a flat surface. And create a staircase by offsetting the next piece about 1/4 of an inch from the previous piece. And you want to keep doing this for all 8 pieces. 

Next, you want to turn this into a semicircle. Push the staircase downward and compress the sides. I use a combination of pinching across the entire surface of the cane, compressing against a flat surface, and then repeatedly pinch to blend the edges.

Step 7:

Assemble Feather Cane Components

Now you should have one half of your feather cane. Slice the cane in half so you get two pieces of a circle. But before you connect the two pieces together, you want to add the vein of the leaf. Choose a color for the vein, roll it through the 6th largest setting of your pasta machine, and insert it 2/3rds of the way from the end, then connect the 2 halves together and cut off the excess clay.

Do some finishing touches with your fingertips to sharpen the point at the top of the feather and to smooth the sides.

Step 8:

Feather Cane Reduction

In order to reduce the feather cane, set it on a flat surface. Take both hands at the opposite ends and compress towards the center and upwards. Apply pressing motions to the bottom of the feather to round it a bit. I also like to add some scrap cray to the ends to reduce the amount of distortion i’ll have to cut off later.

After you’ve reduced it to your desired size, cut off the scrap clay and make your cane slices.

Now you have your completed feather cane. I hope y’all enjoyed this caning tutorial. Please subscribe to my Youtube channel if this was helpful, and good-luck with your next polymer clay project!

Here’s a video version of this tutorial if you would like the supplementation. Don’t forget to have fun!

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Playlist on Polymer Clay Cane Tutorials

An eye-popping retro funk cane tutorial with explosive fireballs, thunderbolts shooting from the center, and electrical flame shapes. I mean why not? If you are new to caning this is a great tutorial for you to get hands on and invoke your sense of imagination and spark your creativity.

While these may look complex, they are actually great beginner canes that are fun to make and allow you to experiment in the process even if it gets messy, you’ll be able to create unique and interesting designs. The key is to not get too caught up in perfection. This cane tutorial will only require basic tools such as your hands, a roller, and a blade. So let’s get started.

Step 1: Choose 4 Colors, Create & Mold Cane Snakes

Each of the 4 colors of clay, should be about 1/4th of a block, which is approximately .5 ounces. I started weighing clay so I can be sure I have an even amount of each color and not have to accumulate more scrap clay than I need to. And you want two of the colors to be high in contrast to one another. In this cane tutorial, i’ll be using Fimo polymer clay.

Roll each color into snakes that are 1/4th of an inch in diameter. Start from light to dark, to minimize color contamination. Don’t worry about keeping the snakes perfectly neat and uniform at this stage. Each snake should be about 9-inches or longer.

After that, cut each snake into about 1.25-inch lengths so that you get multiple pieces to assemble your cane.

Step 2: Assemble the Cane

To start off, you can choose a light colored clay. Before starting, you can redefine the diamond shape a bit, it’ll make the next steps easier. Do this for all the colors.

After that, build up a column of 4 pieces of the same colored clay by attaching each piece on top of one another. The next step is to fill in the front and back sides of the column of clay. You want to choose a contrasting color for this. Fill the 3 gaps on the front and the 3 at the back.

After you filled in the sides of the center column with 3 colors, continue to fill in the gaps with the remaining colors altering between using 4 and 3 pieces. You can experiment a bit if you’d like.

Also note that it’s okay if you see some distortion, because it can enhance the patterning of the cane. However, it is important to fill in gaps completely when adding components so that they either interlock or overlap, you just don’t want to leave trapped air between layers of clay.

Step 3: Compression & Reduction

Compress the block into a rectangular shape.

Next, add blocks of scrap clay to the ends. This is a neat little trick that will minimize the amount of distortion you will have to cut off at the ends after cane reduction.

Apply further compression and reduction techniques to reduce the cane to 7 inches in length.

You don’t have to do this, but at this stage I’ve made 2 copies of this cane in order to show you how to make different variations from this point, one will be used for 2 variations of kaleidoscope designs in SEC 4, and the other will be used for 1 mirror cane design in SEC 5.

SEC 4A:

Kaleidoscope Canes

Kaleidoscope Canes are made up of 6 equilateral triangles or 3 diamonds.

Take the level 1 base cane from the previous section (step 3) and trim off the distorted ends. Cut the cane into 4 equal sections and stack one over the other. You do not need to match the patterns. In fact, the less perfect the assembly, the more interesting the finished pattern will be. Then compress the cane into a square (use a mixture of compressing the back and front faces of the cane) and pinching across the length of the canes or pushing the sides against a clay-safe flat surface. After it is a square, reduce it to 7-inches long again.

Next, i’m about to demonstrate 2 alternative kaleidoscope designs using the square loaf i’ve just created as starting point. So you should have reduced it to 7-inches for your cane. But i’ve reduced it smaller to 14 inches so that I can cut in half and show you 2 different variations. You don’t have to do this, if you only want to go with 1 design of your choice.

SEC 4B:

Kaleidoscope Cane Design: Fireball Cane

For the first variation: Take the square loaf from the starting point from SEC 4A, and pinch the cane into a triangle shape. Depending on where you pinch it, will affect the look. For this variation, i’m pinching starting from the solid blue end. I found it easier, to set it on a table and do the pinching across the entire length of the cane.

After that, cut the cane into 3 equal lengths and assemble the pieces into a fanlike semicircle. Then, cut that cane in half. Take the two halves and piece them together to form a completed hexagon or circle shape. Now you have your completed kaleidoscope cane design which to me, sort of looks like a blazing tumbleweed, but yours may look completely different and that’s okay. That’s the beauty of this technique is that it’ll create some unique designs and patterns depending on who makes it.

SEC 4C:

Kaleidoscope Cane Design: Electric Wave Cane

Take the leftover copy created in SEC 4A (where we cut the 14inch cane into 2 copies). And instead of pinching from the solid blue end, i’m pinching from the side with yellow. Go through the same process as previously.

After pinching, cut the cane into 3 equal lengths, assemble the pieces into a semicircle. Cut the cane in half, then piece them together again. Now you have your completed kaleidoscope cane design variation, this one sort of looks like lightning bolts shooting from the center. It’s cool how simply pinching from a different starting point, can give you new designs to play with.

SEC 5:

Electrical Flames Mirror Canes

Mirror canes, are made up of 4 mirrored sections that mirror along 4 sides. In this section we’ll be creating a mirror cane, and using the slices to assemble a mirror pattern.

To make a mirror cane, i’m grabbing the last copy of cane base level 1 created all the way back in STEP 3 (as a recap I created two copies of the level 1 base, then took one of the copies to create two other level 2 bases that formed the fireball and electric wave canes).

Cut off the distorted ends, then cut it into 4 equal lengths, stack them on top of one another. Then compress the cane into a square. After it is a square, reduce it to 7-inches long again. Then pinch parallel to the core center column across the length of the cane to turn it into a triangular shape.

If these steps sounds familiar, that’s because the mirror canes do share the initial same steps followed by the kaleidoscope canes, but here’s where we’ll do things a little differently. Instead of cutting into 3 pieces, cut it into 2 pieces, then mirror the 2 halves so that it now has a diamond shape.

Next, compress the points of the diamond inward to form a square shape. You can use a combination of techniques to create the square shape by pressing the cane against a clay safe table and or using a roller to roll across the sides of the square.

Now you have your mirror cane. In order create the mirror effect, cut out 4 slices, and arrange them, rotate or flip them, so that the pieces mirror each other and you can play around with making your own patterns as your desire.

I hope y’all enjoyed this tutorial, i’m getting feedback that’ll y’all love making canes which i’m delighted to hear, and i’ll be producing more cane videos as well as other polymer clay tutorials in the near future.

To make sure you don’t miss these videos, I invite y’all to subscribe to my channel and hit the notification bell that pops up next to it, that way you get an alert when my next video is up.

Here’s a video version of this tutorial. Goodluck!

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Playlist on Polymer Clay Beginner Tutorials

Playlist on Polymer Clay Cane Tutorials