Two sided veiners for making sugar , cold porcelain clay, wafer paper, and many other handmade flowers: is it even a thing or is it the new thing? We all want to have the best and best-suited flower-making tools, so it’s about time I touched on this confusion in my blog, ( especially as I just added TWO two-sided veiners in my shop www.veiners.com)
DO read to the end if you’re interested in making TIPS
In a nutshell, the difference basically means, whether the veiner you get is capturing both the front and the back of the plant ( hence ‘two-sided’ ) or one side only, which is always or almost always the back because of its stronger definition.
With two-sided, you generally get a weaker front of the plant definition but a space to insert the wire. With a one-sided, stronger definition… instead of space to insert your wire, you’ll get a gap where to place the glue-covered wire, to then join the sides over the top of the wire, ‘sandwiching’ the wire in. If this seems too good to be true it’s because it is, the joint is rarely neat from the get-go, and the wire that would hold is normally bigger than the gap- but… there are hacks and it’s fun getting there, one might say…)
With some plants two sided is a must as with Lily Bloom, or something will be obviously amis.
With most other flower petals back is best by far as it gives you a nice texture and veining is whatever you normally do.
With leaves wiring is generally much trickier and you need to decide what wins for you, what combo of pluses and trade offs…
a. the need for a better definition ( some of which DOES get lost ‘in translation’ while using clay or what have you )
b. the simple preference of how to insert your wire, could be a strong pull, for sure
c. the blind faith in botanical correctness for the sake of it* ( I add some redeeming observations at the end if interested )
Now, I’d been running my veiner shop for good few years now, and coming to about 100 unique veiners and molds there. ( so much for my plans to stick to 20 or so popular ones ) including several one sided veiners, with multi-leaf and Peony leaf, for example being very popular.
With this and the above chat in mind, however, the next thing I’m doing, I have done in fact, is to make a few popular leaves into two-sided veiners. These leaves are HYDRANGEA VEINER and ROSE LEAF VEINER– the main leaves there are? Am I right? Maybe Peony as well? Anyway.
With these two sided ones, you are best off inserting your wire, as I said ( …well you won’t be tempted to ‘sandwich’ , your wire in the middle as there’s no gap now, with the two-sided)
Both methods require practice and in case of most leaves, the result will look tamer… though also more realistic, some might say… I don’t know, I had a play as you can see and initially, I hated it but then I thought yep, some charm to it, some subtle movement or is it my imagination? Can it be commercial, this subtlety? The ‘use old paste and just forget it’ ? Judge by yourself.
…And so I guess this is where I am with the whole two sided vs one – sided . Would love to hear your thoughts on this , do leave a comment below
Here’s some LEAF-MAKING TIPS , when using 2-sided veiners ( Wallis veiners or any other, really …)
- though it might be tricky using the thicker wire, it’s only worth inserting the wire thick enough to actually hold your cut out – I got tricked often enough by own wishful thinking to vouch for this one.
- The if the leaf is long , as in case of Peony or large Hydrangea leaf, add water and NOT glue to your wire, (no, not even runny glue worth risking), or it might well stick and go no further along the route you intend for it. The lengthe of the will help to keep it in, as per larger sticking area This applies to Cold Porcelain , not sugar btw, as sugar is less grippy.
- If using two-sided veiner, your paste NEEDS TO BE VERY FRESH to get the most possible out of tame definition of the front