How to Make Polymer Clay Border Canes

In today’s post, I’m showing you how to whip up three easy-peasy polymer clay border canes using an extruder and a festive color palette that’s perfect for the holidays!

Polymer clay border canes are a breeze to make, especially with an extruder and a few pops of color. With the holiday season just around the corner, I’m going full-on festive with a classic red and green palette. The red? Fimo Professional True Red straight out of the pack. The green? Well, that’s a mix of green scraps, so no exact recipe this time—sorry! And for the light green, I threw a bit of that green scrap into some white clay to get a nice, soft contrast.

These polymer clay border canes are a fab way to add a little pizzazz to your decor, and you can customize them to any color scheme you like. I even used a red and white border cane (similar to cane #2 in this tutorial) to jazz up a polymer clay bowl with a floral pattern. Once you’ve mastered the basics, the sky’s the limit! Try a Skinner blend or experiment with new color combos to make them truly yours.

Looking for more inspo? Stick around for my next blog post, where I’ll show you how I use these canes to create retro-style Christmas tree ornaments. Trust me—you won’t want to miss it!

Now, grab that extruder, give it a good clean (because let’s be real, mine needed it), slap on some lubricant for smoother cranking, and let’s get rolling!

Tools & Materials for Polymer Clay Border Canes

• Non-porous work surface — I work on either glazed tile or glass
• Pasta machine dedicated to polymer clay use — I use an Atlas 180 and will refer to the settings I use on my machine. If you don’t have a pasta machine an acrylic roller and some playing cards will do in a pinch, it’ll just take a little more work.
• Polymer clay — I’m using a red, green, and light green for this tutorial
• Sharp polymer clay blade
• Polymer clay extruder & disks — I’m using a square, circle, and two different triangles
• Round cutter — use one that is closest in size to the diameter of your extruder

Directions for Polymer Clay Border Canes

Border Cane 1

Condition all three colors of clay before you begin.

Roll a piece of the red clay into a cylinder.

Sheet the light green clay on the thickest setting (no.0 on my Atlas) and wrap the red cylinder twice.

Reduce the wrapped cylinder down to a size that will fit your extruder. Cut a thick circle of light green clay and place it on one end.

Place the clay into the extruder so the capped end will come out first when you begin extruding the clay.

Place the square disk on the extruder and extrude the clay.

Roll a cylinder of the green clay, place it in the extruder, and extrude the clay using a right triangle disk.

Cut both of the extruded pieces into 1.5” to 2” lengths.

Begin building the polymer clay border cane as shown in the photograph.

When all of the square cane has been used up place a final triangle of green on both ends on one side of the cane.

Sheet a piece of the green clay on a no.5 setting. Place the cane on top of the sheet of clay and trim the edges of the sheet flush with the border cane. Cut straight down through the triangles on the sides, cutting them in half along the length.

Take the triangle halves you just cut off, flip them over and place them on the cane so the sides are straight. Place another sheet of green clay rolled out on a no.5 setting on the opposite side of the first sheet.

Border Cane 2

Roll out three cylinders of clay to the size that will fit your extruder. The light green should be about twice as long as the red and green cylinders.

Extrude each color separately using a triangular disk. I’ve used an isosceles triangle but if you don’t have that disk a right triangle would work just as well.

Cut the extruded clay into 1.5” to 2” lengths.

Assemble the cane as shown, alternating the red and green pointing up and all light green triangles pointing down.

Straighten the sides by cutting through the length of the end triangles.

Sheet a piece of light green clay on a no.3 setting and cover both the top and bottom of the cane. Neatly trim away the excess with a sharp blade.

Border Cane 3

Build a bullseye cane using all three colors of clay. Start with a light green core and wrap several times with the green and red clays. Vary the thickness of each layer. 

Unfortunately, I didn’t make a note of each thickness but I think it went something like this:

Light green core

Green — no.1

Light green — no.3

Red — no.1 x 2

Green — no.0

The exact thickness of each layer doesn’t really matter though. Just mix it up for variety and interest.

Reduce the bullseye cane until it will fit in the extruder.* Cut a thick circle of green clay and cap one end (just like with the first border cane above.) Place the clay in the extruder so the capped end comes out first.

Place a circular disk on the extruder and extrude the clay.

Cut the clay into 1.5” to 2” lengths.

**At this point I decided I wanted a thicker green border on the outside so I wrapped each length in a sheet of green clay (no.6). If you want a thicker outside color do yourself a favor and wrap the clay before you chop it up into short pieces**

Roll a piece of green clay into a snake and shape it into a triangle with curved sides small enough to fit between the round lengths of clay. Use smaller triangles on the ends for straight sides.

Sheet a piece of green clay on a no.3 setting and cover both the top and bottom of the cane. Trim away the excess clay with a sharp blade.

*Note: I had quite a bit of cane after reducing the cylinder to fit the extruder. Instead of extruding the entire thing at this point I cut about 1/3 off and extruded that. Be sure to keep an eye out for the next post to see what I did with the rest.

If you’ve enjoyed learning how to make these polymer clay border canes and give this tutorial a try please tag @bysandracallander on Instagram!

As always, if you have any questions or comments, I’m happy to hear from you.