The Palm Tree Cane

  The winter weather has hit all of the country pretty hard and, according to the silly rodent, we're not done with it quite yet!  Here in North Texas, they're talking freezing rain/snow tomorrow again - ug!  So, now is the time to get back to talking about all my wonderful tropical beach series of canes.  This post is about my Palm Tree Cane.

  The Palm Tree Cane is a great cane and actually much simpler than it looks!  The trunk of the tree is made up of a stacked series of shape changing canes and the palm fronds are actually a modified leaf cane.  Both canes are standard canes that we all have learned on, so it's just knowing how to modify them and put them together!
  So far, we've created a Water Cane, and made sand and a beautiful tropical sky in my blog post on December 29, so now let's put some trees on our beach.  The tutorial for my Palm Tree Cane can be found in my Etsy shop, or - if you prefer - I do have raw canes already made and ready to go!  Take very thin slices of your palm tree cane and position them on your sand.  Vary the size of your cane (or thickness) to create depth.  The smaller or thinner slices put towards the top of your island and make your cane bigger or thicker as you move down.  Gently press your canes flat so that you don't distort them.  The thicker slices will create larger trees.  Take extra special care smoothing out the translucent edges so that they're soft and not as defined.  If you choose, carefully trim off the thicker translucent edges to get less of a 'halo' effect.  You can bend the tree or make it straighter to give them more character.  Continue to smooth the trees into your beach scene with a brayer or by gently rolling your bangle on your clean work bench.
  We've already created our Flamingo Cane, so the next step will be adding a few shells to the beach!  Look for that post in the upcoming weeks!  In the mean time, enjoy the end of winter and dream of warm weather to come!