This is another variation on the round Natasha bead. Again as the bead gets turned inside out, this is all about making an interesting middle. This method uses an extruded string, but I am sure it will work equally well with a bullseye cane reduced so that it is long and thin. I’d also like to try this method with a jellyroll cane (send me your results if you try it!)
- Tangerine Ocelot Beads by Cate van Alphen
First a note about what to expect when extruding clay.
Cross section of extruded cane
This diagram illustrates what happens when a stack of different coloured disks are extruded: each colour forms a layer around the whole snake so the end of the snake will have concentric circles made from all the colours. This is why the whole extruded string has the first colour that comes out of the extruder (i.e. the bottom of the stack when loading the extruder). If you have a large stack, the outer circles at the end of the snake will be really thin and the colours will blend together.
Start by extruding a string of clay. I like to extrude separate strings for each bead so that I can control the bead size and also so that the circles of the cross section at the end do not become too thin.
Roll your extruded string into a ball. I start with the last piece of clay to come out of the extruder as this will have more layers of colour.
Roll up the whole string of clay. Be sure to change the direction often as this will be more interesting when you cut it open to make the Natasha bead.
Squish the wound ball into a cube.
Now that your clay is in a nice cube, proceed with the steps to make a round Natasha bead.
(See my previous post about how to make a round Natasha bead.)
Cube has been turned inside out using the Natasha bead method.
Natasha bead has now been rounded off.
Now you can pierce the bead, bake and finish it as you choose. I sanded and polished mine to a high shine. Incidentally the finished beads have been posted to my Zibbet shop where there are more pictures.
Fulgorine 
I love these from your shop – Orchid Moon Polymer Clay Beads tweeted
I love it!! I went to my clay table and tried this as soon as I read it. I much prefer round beads to the typical oblong Natasha beads, and the patterns are reliably wonderful! Thanks for sharing this. Could you please explain in more detail how you do this with a Stroppel cane?
Glad you like it. I need to take pictures of the Stroppel cane method ( I didn’t think to take pictures as I did it since I didn’t know if it would work out)! In the mean time… make a Stroppel cane – my slices off this were rectangular. Then to make the second iteration put a thin layer of you base colour and lay slices of the Stroppel cane horizontally. Then another layer of base colour and then slices vertically. Repeat until your new stack is a reasonable thickness so that you can cut it into cubes to start Natasha-ing.
I’ll let you know when I have better pictures, but I don’t have a lot of time at the moment for clay 😦
Note when you are placing your slices of Stroppel can the pretty side is facing up (as if you were laying them to make a pattern sheet).
this is very clever. I’m going to experiment!
Thanks for your reply. I think I understand it now. I hope you can get back to claying soon!