You’ve probably seen examples of these as jewelry (the
same technique is used in wax for candles, in glass, in
candy, etc.). It looks like it would be super-difficult to
make - but not so! While making millefiori beads with actual
pictures evident in them is truly "detail
work", it’s easy enough to use the millefiori
technique to make colorful beads in wonderful
more-or-less-random patterns...
In the simplest of versions, you roll baking clay out
into thin "snakes" or sheets and lay a bunch of
them into a long tube, nesting the colors together into a
desired pattern... So that when you make thin crosswise
slices from the pressed-together tube, the pattern is all.
(I suppose the very simplest versions would be: A
random bunch of different-colored snakes - the sliced
results being circles composed of color-sprinkled dots. Or,
several different-colored sheets rolled tightly together -
which would result in circles of swirled colors.)
The "tube", as I’m calling it, can be in any
shape desired - round, or triangular, or square, etc., so
that the slices come out in specific shapes. (Or you could
wrap the whole in a thicker sheet of one color to form the
border, and then just shape the border part - for
instance, pinching up 6 "points" in the border to
create a hexagonal shape, even though the pattern is
round.) The patterns can look like random mosaics; or if you’re
able to think ahead as you build with the strips and/or
sheets of colored clay (or, to get away from the simple,
other-shaped "rolls" - e.g., several long
triangle-sided snakes pieced together), you can create
faces, animals, or even elaborate pictures.
To make beads, you simply roll out small clay beads and
carefully press these thin pattern slices onto the outside.
Make the beads whatever shape you like, whether with flat or
curved surfaces doesn’t matter - you can always cut the
millefiori slices to fit together (or simply use them as
centerpieces, as it were, with other bits of plain-colored
clay). Some lovely patterns can also be made by stretching
the slices out to fit around the beads. (At the end, of
course, you’d make holes in the beads in some fashion -
drying a number of them on thin wire is an easy way to do
it.)
