There are no original ideas

After a busy few days of social stuff, it was nice yesterday to stay out of the heat and work on crafty stuff at home. I had seen some cool polymer clay buttons on Pinterest and wanted to see if I could recreate them with what I had on hand. Many polymer clay people use canes, (here's a link to some pictures showing how one is made) and the process leaves a lot of trimmed ends behind. Some clever clayer came up with a way to use these bits and ends to make new things. These are the Pinterest buttons (and the link to their source):

Not having done really any work with canes, I tried to get some bits of coordinating color, so I made a blend, which turned out to be two blends because it got too wide for my pasta machine to roll out.

I then used my cutters and cut out a big and a small square and rearranged the pieces. This was to get a lot of color combinations in a small space.

I then cut one of the blends into little pieces.

And applied those pieces to a sheet of black clay. This was pretty time consuming, but I wanted to get a nice distribution of colors. I might make longer pieces next time.

I then rolled the whole thing once more through the pasta machine to smoosh it all together, and then cut out the buttons. 

I still need to poke the holes (except for the test one in the bottom left corner), but I'm pleased with this first go. I'll put a layer of glaze over them to shine them up a bit, too. I love how creative ideas build on other creative ideas. 

We're havin' a heat wave here for the next week or so. I've got my two window air conditioners in place, one in the living room and one in my room, and last night alternately baked and froze until I got the settings right. We actually got some rain last night. It's so rare lately and very much needed. The fire is still going. 83,000 acres burned, almost 200 homes lost. It's moving north and west now, and there are still many homes in its path.