Hi, my name is Donna Cato.
I've been working with Polymer Clay for about 10 years now.
I work for Polyform Products Company, otherwise known as the Sculpey People.
For the Sculpey People, I teach, I demonstrate, and I write.
You might have seen some of my articles in Jewelry Crafts, Lapidary Journal, Michael's
Arts and Crafts, perhaps Bead and Button, or maybe even Crafts Magazine.
I just finished my first big book, The Art of Polymer Clay, which is being published
by Watson Guptall.
Now, today you're going to be learning some simple millefiori techniques.
Now, you might not know what millefiori is.
It's another technique that we've borrowed and adapted from another discipline.
This time we've taken from Venetian glass making.
Now, we're going to be making canes.
Canes are pictures that run lengthwise through the clay.
Now, the most amazing thing about millefiori canes is that they can be reduced.
You can take and compress the sides and lengthen them.
And through the lengthening process, you don't distort the image, you just make it smaller.
So let's start.
Now, the canes we'll be making today are the Jelly Roll, Stained Glass, the Checkerboard,
the Quilt Pattern, the Flower, and finally the Watermelon Cane.
As an added bonus for you, we're going to do a project.
That's going to be a stubby little pen covered with clay and then finally covered with thin
slices off of our flower cane.
The tools you'll need for this tape, millefiori basics, are the pasta machine, a brayer or
roller, the new blade or the tissue blade, the marksit.
If you don't have a marksit, you can use a ruler.
Pro tool or another needle type tool.
And clay in your choice of colors.
You'll need a convection oven, conventional oven, or a toaster oven to cure your project.
Now, I'd also recommend that you get an oven thermometer and a timer to make sure that
when you cure your project, you don't bake it for too long a time or at too high a temperature.
Now, for the project, you're also going to need a big stick pen and a wire cutter.
To begin our millefiori tape, why don't we start with the simplest cane, a jelly roll.
Now, first step, of course, is to condition your clay.
I'm using Sculpey 3 in gold and in black.
Take it out of the package and on the number one setting of the pasta machine, roll it
through.
Now, I'm going to do this about, oh, I would say 10 times.
Folded it in half, I'm rolling it through again.
Now, when you roll through, make sure that you roll through with the fold perpendicular
to the roller so you don't trap any air.
Now, you see, we make clay at the factory and from the time we make it to the time you
get it, the ingredients might have separated.
It's really a lot like cooking.
So conditioning is just remixing all those ingredients.
Now, if you don't adequately condition, your finished product is going to be weak and brittle.
So you want to make sure you do this step correctly.
Okay, here's our gold sheet.
I've already prepared the black sheet.
So I'm just going to take the black and put it on the gold and using my blade, I'm going
to trim away the excess so that I have two sheets that are exactly the same size.
Now, I could roll it up at this point, but I want to have more revolutions in my jelly
roll.
So I'm going to take it and I'm going to send it through on the thin side, through the number
one setting again, and make it longer.
Now, I'm tapering one end and I'm going to roll it up.
Now, as you're rolling up your jelly roll, try to roll it up tightly.
Make sure that you don't have any air pockets.
Once you've rolled it up, just take it and roll it.
You can hear it.
You can hear that edge.
I want to eliminate that edge.
Okay, that looks pretty good.
So why don't I take a slice and show you what we've got.
So there's our jelly roll.
Very simple.
Now, I have another jelly roll I prepared.
This one's a little different because it has these stripes around the side.
But as you can see, I've taken an original jelly roll and through a process we call reduction,
I've made it smaller.
I reduced this piece then and I made it smaller yet.
You don't really lose any detail through the reduction process.
So we work large and then we reduce to make it smaller.
Let's reduce this cane.
Reduction starts this way.
I don't advise that you put it on your table and start rolling.
You lose too much.
Now, when you reduce a cane, there's always a certain amount of waste, but you can minimize
it if you start by reducing with your fingers this way.
You can see I'm just pressing the sides gently and it's slowly getting longer.
But you see, I can control the amount of movement.
If one part is moving too fast, I can push it down.
If the sides aren't moving fast enough, maybe I can coax them by pushing them up.
When this piece is about, I would say, six inches long, what we'll do is we'll put it
on our work surface and continue by rolling.
But you know, you can always reduce.
You can't make it larger.
So what I like to do is cut it in half at this point and I'll reserve this piece.
I can always reduce.
I can't make it larger.
So let's continue reducing this next piece.
Now, as you roll, you don't want to press too hard.
You don't want to leave finger dents in the surface of the cane.
So the clay is responding more toward the movement of my hands than it is to the actual
pressure that I'm applying.
Now I'm going to reduce it one more time.
And here's our tiny cane.
So as I said earlier, there's a certain amount of waste when you reduce your canes.
You want to try to minimize that waste.
This is what we have after our reduction process, which really isn't too bad.
So let's move on to the next cane.
Now let's make a checkerboard cane.
Now this cane is only a little more complicated than a jelly roll.
We're going to be using black Sculpey 3 and white Sculpey 3.
Now I've already conditioned my clay and I've rolled it out.
This is a sheet of white through the number one setting in the pasta machine that I folded
in half so it's double thickness.
I've done the same thing with the black.
What I'm going to do is I'm going to stack them and cut away the excess so that they're
the same size.
Okay now for this cane I'm going to put my paper down because I don't really need it.
And this is what we have so far.
Remember this is double thickness of the number one setting in the pasta machine.
Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to take my marxit on the five millimeter side, put
it on the clay, press, and transfer the marx.
Once again if you don't have a marxit you can use a ruler and measure off approximately
quarter inch increments.
Following the marx I'm just going to cut, taking the pieces and you're going to turn
every other one so that the same color isn't adjacent.
They're across from each other corner to corner.
Now as you're working check both sides and make sure you have a nice neat checkerboard
pattern.
You can see that that's pretty good.
Let's check this one.
Now let's stack them.
Now I have four up and five across.
So I need one more row.
I want five up and five across.
Okay let's take a slice and see what we've got.
Here's a checkerboard cane.
Now this checkerboard cane can be used for a lot of things.
As a matter of fact some of the nicest millefiori vessels and picture frames I've ever seen
incorporate a lot of these checkerboard canes simply because it's such strong graphic impact.
Simple but very strong.
Now we're going to move on to the rainbow checkerboard.
I've already prepared my sheets in advance.
Here I have dusty rose, lavender, atomic orange, and hot pink.
Let's make our rainbow checkerboard using these colors.
Now like the original checkerboard we made each of these layers is composed of double
thickness through the number one setting.
So I rolled a sheet and then I folded it in half.
That's why if you look on the sides you can see that these are all folded.
Now I'm going to trim this away.
We're going to use the same setting on the marks at number five or five millimeter.
Transfer the marks.
Now my clay is pretty warm and that's why it's sticking.
So at home when you do this if you find that it happens you might want to just let it sit
there, walk away, come back to it a little later.
So here are my pieces.
Now I'm going to take each of these apart and reassemble them later into our checkerboard.
So let's take one off the dusty rose.
The next one I'll separate at the lavender.
This one I'm going to separate at the atomic orange.
And this one will remain just the way it is.
Now I'm going to reassemble this by taking the complete piece and then adding the pieces
that I've split off in kind of a stair step fashion.
So this is what we have.
This is half of our checkerboard.
Now it's time to assemble the rest of it.
So I'll take this one single piece, put this here.
Then I'll take the next piece and finally the last.
So the resulting cane that I've made is kind of small.
You may elect to make yours larger by making each of the thicknesses of your slab thicker.
I'm going to reduce this cane now because we're going to turn this into a quilt pattern.
I'm going to take my brayer, roll along each surface, smooth it out, cut this in half,
put it together, cut it in half again, and that's our final assembly.
Now we have a nice quilt pattern.
And it all started with a simple checkerboard.
Now as I reduce this cane just by squeezing the sides, you'll see that I can eliminate
the gaps in the air pockets between each section.
Now let's make a rainbow jelly roll.
We're going to turn our rainbow jelly roll into stained glass.
The rainbow jelly roll is really only a little more complex than the normal jelly roll because
I've made a layered slab.
You see all the different colors there?
Well I rolled the clay through the number one setting in the pasta machine, then stacked
together and cut so that they're exactly the same size.
Now I'm going to add one more sheet of lavender.
And this is really very, very simple as you can see.
Now we're ready to make our rainbow jelly roll.
I've already prepared my black sheet.
It's black clay through the number five setting.
I'm working on paper because in this case, when we put all our little pieces on, I'm
going to roll it with a brayer.
And I don't want the clay to stick to my work surface.
So paper's a really good kind of release agent for that.
Now I'm going to take my marksit and on the three millimeter side, I'm just going to lightly
press.
Now you can see I've transferred all the marks across and I'll just follow those.
Now take your blade and cut.
And I'm going to cut about, I would say, eight of these.
If you don't have a marksit, of course you can use a ruler to mark these increments.
Just make one-eighth of an inch marks across the top of your slab.
Now let's layer these and I'm going to put them all in the same order so that the lavender
and the dusty rose are always adjacent.
Of course, when you make yours, you're going to use the colors that you choose.
Now I'm just going to take my brayer and lightly roll across the top.
This is a lot easier than rolling each individual color into snakes and putting them side by
side.
I'm going to taper one end.
Now let's take our blade and trim that base sheet.
It's time to roll it up.
Now as we did with our regular jelly roll, you want to roll it up tight.
You don't want any air pockets.
And we're just rolling kind of smooth that last edge.
There's our rainbow jelly roll.
Now we're going to do something a little bit different to turn this into stained glass.
First of all, it's only about almost two inches so I'm going to reduce it until it's about
four.
Reduction process is the same.
Remember we rotate and we squeeze.
Now I'm just going to put it flat and I'm just rolling to smooth the surface.
I'm going to trim off the ends.
And now I'm going to cut a quarter of it off.
And I'm setting this aside.
We're going to use this again but not right now.
The remaining three quarters of the cane I'm standing up on end and using my blade I'm
going to quarter it by cutting through the length.
That's half.
I've turned it and I'm going to do that again.
Separate the pieces.
Take the reserved quarter and reduce it.
Now this particular piece is going to become the center of the cane.
Pieces off the large cane.
Turn them inside out.
So now I'm backing it up.
I'm putting the backside of the cane to the center.
So I'm putting the pieces on.
Of course I'm turning it and making sure that the other side looks good too.
So now my round canes have become square.
Now we'll reduce this.
Reduction of a square cane is really only a little more difficult than a circular one
or round one.
Same principle.
I'm squeezing, compressing the sides and turning.
Pulling it just a little bit.
And I think I'll reduce this to a length of 8 inches.
Now when you reduce remember to check the ends.
Make sure it's not distorting too much.
Now take your roller and roll along the sides.
I'm turning and rolling.
Now I'm rolling just to smooth the surface because as I'm working this, you can't really
see it at this point, but somehow the sides become indented.
So you want to make them perfectly flat.
Let's cut it in half.
Cut this in half and put it together again.
And what we have is a stained glass cane.
Now when you make this cane on a white field as opposed to a black one, you end up with
something that looks very much like batik.
So here's a comparison.
You see what happens when you put it on white as opposed to black.
In the same way you can use the same technique with that original jelly roll that we made,
the black and gold one.
What you end up with are tile patterns.
Later in the tape we're going to make a flower.
We'll do the same division technique and we'll make something that looks like wallpaper.
You've mastered the jelly roll and the checkerboard.
We're going to move on to something that's a little more complex, but you'll be surprised
to know how easy it is, and it's a simple flower.
So here's our flower.
Probably won't look exactly like this, but it'll be very close.
Start with a conditioned package of orange clay.
I'm using atomic orange.
And form it into a cylinder.
I'm going to take my new blade and I'm going to cut halfway through and I'm going to open
the slit like this.
I'm taking red and this is, oh, I would say half a package, maybe a little bit more, but
we won't be using all of it.
And I'm going to reduce this to a diameter of probably a little more than a quarter of
an inch, less than half an inch.
And by pinching the top, I'm reshaping this snake and I'm making it triangular in shape.
As you can see, I'm just kind of running my fingers along the length of it to smooth it.
And this is what it looks like.
It's very simple to make.
Now I'm just going to place this wedge right in that slit.
And I'm going to trim the ends.
And I'm going to make two more cuts.
Now make sure when you make these cuts that you send the blade through very, very close
to that original cut.
Open up the slit.
Place the wedge inside.
One more cut and you can see just how close this cut is to that original center cut.
Open it up.
Now I've inserted that final wedge.
Trim the sides.
Now you can see what we've got so far.
Now originally this cylinder was round.
It's not round anymore.
So we're going to restore the roundness of it simply by compressing, just pushing that
top back together.
It doesn't look so great right now, but it really isn't going to make any difference.
Now as I said before, we're going to have six petals in our flower.
We're starting with one petal.
One petal will become six petals.
I'm rolling it.
I just want it to be round again.
Let me take a slice off and show you what we've got.
There's our petal.
Now I'm going to take a sheet of lavender and I'm going to wrap only the orange part
of the petal with this sheet.
Now this I've rolled through the number one setting, but I think I want it thinner.
So I'm going to roll it through number five.
Remember leave that red exposed.
Only cover the orange part.
Now we have an outline on our petal.
The next step is to reduce this petal.
As we reduce the other jelly roll that we made earlier, we started vertically just by
squeezing, rotating and pressing.
At this point I'm going to start rolling flat on my surface and I'm pulling a little bit.
Rolling and pulling.
We want it to be about 13 inches long because we're going to cut the waste away.
That should leave us a good 12 inches.
I've cut it in half and now I'm going to eyeball this.
I probably should use a ruler.
You might opt to use one because I want to cut this into thirds.
Here are our six petals.
Now for our center, I'm just taking this jelly roll with the stripes that you saw in the
first step.
Now it's a little bit too large so I'll reduce it slightly.
Ideally what you want is the center of your six petal flower to be the same diameter as
the petals.
This might actually be a little bit too small.
So because it's too small I'm going to wrap it with a sheet of lavender in the number
one setting.
And this should be about the right size.
Now it's time to assemble our flower.
We'll take each petal, make sure that the red part, this little spiky area, is right
there against the center and you're going to check both sides.
Next one on, check both sides.
Make sure that it hasn't twisted.
Alright let me make a cut and I'll show you what we've got so far.
Now normally you wouldn't do this at home because this one cut that I've made could
represent up to five beads or six beads in your finished cane but that's what we have.
Now the next step is packing the cane.
There are a couple different ways of doing this.
Some people might make wedges that fit into this because ultimately we want a round cane
but I prefer to do it a different way.
I prefer to take a sheet of clay, in this case we're going to use green, wrap it around
and then fill the indentations with clay.
This is clay that's been rolled through the number one setting on the pasta machine.
Okay so here's our flower.
If you take a look you can see that there are air spaces between the petals.
What I'm going to do is I'm going to take a needle tool and I'm going to press them
in and eliminate them.
Whenever possible you want to eliminate air pockets because that really is the primary
source of distortion in your finished cane when you go to reduce.
This I'm really not too concerned about because when the clay is filled in this lavender
will fill into this air space and the lavender and the lavender will meet.
I'm really not concerned about that.
Now it's time to fill in these indented areas.
So I'm going to roll a snake to fill them.
This is green sculpey three and I'm just going to fill in between each of the petals and
that's what we have so far.
Now let's reduce this cane.
Remember rotate, keep your eyes on the ends to make sure that certain parts aren't moving
a lot faster than others.
If they are try to help them catch up.
And I've got a nice big cane here I want to save part of it so at this point I'm going
to cut it in half and reserve half the flower.
Let's take the other half and do the quartering and reassembly and I'll show you how you make
a cane that looks very much like wallpaper or fabric.
I'm going to take about a quarter off just as we did before.
Set that aside.
Stand the remaining clay on end.
Take the blade, I'm rocking it a little bit and then cutting through.
One more cut.
Remember we're reducing this piece of the cane which becomes the center of the new cane
we make so that the diameter is the same as the radius of the outer cane.
Hopefully it's pretty even and we'll reassemble.
I call this backing up.
We're going to back the cane up.
Now we'll reduce this cane.
Now if you use a clay like Sculpey 3 which tends to be a softer clay as opposed to Fimo
or even Cernit, you might elect to use marble or some kind of surface that's cool like marble
to work on that minimizes the heating up in the clay.
The reverse is also true.
If you use Fimo you might elect to use something that has a warmer surface temperature.
Let's cut this in half, put it together.
Let's cut it in half again and it looks like wallpaper.
Of course this cane could also be used to make fabric effects.
Here's our finished cane.
The last cane we're going to make today is a watermelon cane.
Here it is.
We're going to start with the seed.
One seed is going to become all the seeds in the watermelon.
It's pretty small, about an inch and a quarter by a quarter of an inch.
We're going to take white and I'm going to roll it through the number five setting on
my pasta machine.
I'm going to wrap it around my seed.
Whenever you take a sheet of one color and you wrap it around another, that's known as
a bullseye cane.
Here we have a seed.
We're going to go further.
We're going to put the flesh of the watermelon around the seed and I'm going to put three
or four layers around this one seed.
There's one.
We'll do another.
There's two.
Now we're going for three.
Let's take a look at what we have.
There's our one seed and the flesh around the seed.
Now remember I said this one seed becomes 24.
The way that's done is by reducing it and making what we call a lace cane.
Now you can't see the lace effect of course because this is a watermelon seed but ordinarily
it would be a cylinder of one color with a thin sheet of another around so you get an
outline.
By the time you divide and reassemble the finished effect, it looks like lace.
Let's just reduce this and cut it into six pieces.
Then the ends again, two pieces.
We're going to reduce it again and cut it into four pieces and then we'll have 24 seeds.
Now I trimmed off this one end because as you can see, one of these seeds is almost
gone.
If I had just continued to do that at some point I would only have five seeds or four
seeds and what I want is really six.
Let's cut this in half.
You can see we've got 12 seeds.
I'm going to trim this side again.
Cut it in half again and now I have 24 seeds.
Watermelon seeds tend to be concentrated around the rind so I'm going to take a small cylinder
of red and I'm going to put each of these sections around the cylinder.
Now let's just roll this to smooth it out.
Now I'm not trying to reduce this.
I'm not trying to make it smaller or longer.
I'm just trying to smooth the surface so that each of the four sections blends into the
other.
And that's what we have so far.
Now it's time to put the rind on.
So we'll start with our white clay again.
Roll it through number five and wrap this around our watermelon.
Now we'll take this lime green and we'll do the same thing through the number five setting.
Now you want to make sure that the ends meet pretty neatly.
That's called a butt joint.
You don't want any overlapping.
So if you find that you have a little too much clay just cut it away and then smooth
the two sides together.
Alright now it's time to put the stripes around the outside of our watermelon.
I have a sheet of emerald sculpey three and I'm going to make a layered slab and the slab
is going to be composed of this emerald green sculpey three through the number one setting.
I'm going to take this lime on the number five setting, put it on top, just trim it
so that they're the same size.
Then I'm going to cut it in half again and stack one on top of the other so now I have
four stripes.
Now taking this layered slab I'm going to cut thin slices and I'm going to take these
slices and I'm going to put them all around on the outside of our watermelon cane.
Now you just continue cutting and putting the slices on until you completely cover your
cane.
Now it's completely covered, put it back on your table and roll it.
Now I'm going to cut it in half and save half.
This is what it looks like so far.
Let's try reducing this piece.
Wow, look how tiny they are.
And let's reduce one more time to see how small we can make those seeds and still see
them.
And here we have our watermelon cane.
Now by taking the blade and sending it through and now watermelon anyone?
As you can see I've made some miniature watermelon pieces from this cane.
To make half of a watermelon what you're going to do is you take the cane and you cut off
a piece, I would say that's almost half an inch.
You take it and you just push the end over like this.
You just close up one side with your fingers.
Just push it over.
Close it up.
And now you have half the watermelon.
Of course to make a whole watermelon you're going to seal both ends.
Well now that you've made your canes let's take one of them and make a pen.
First we start with a normal big stick pen.
Now I'm going to cut this.
I want it to be shorter so I've got a nice little wire cutter and I'm just inserting
it at the point that the black neck meets the white sheath.
I'm going to remove this.
Cut it aside and right there across next to the B I'm going to cut it off.
Now I'm taking the ink cartridge and the neck again and I'm going to remove just the ink
itself because I want to put the neck part back in.
Now I'll put the neck back in.
Now the ink cartridge is going to be cut later.
Of course we're not going to put it back in the pen until after the pen is covered and
baked.
Now I've taken some of my scrap clay and mixed it all together.
It's actually a very nice color.
Rolled it through the number one setting.
Take the pen, cut a straight edge.
It's a little bit too long so I'm going to cut it and I'm leaving about I would say a
sixteenth of an inch over the length of the pen.
I'm just going to roll it up.
Now roll it up so that you don't introduce any air pockets between the clay and the pen
sheath.
Take the end and just push the clay over to close it.
Because the neck tapers there's too much clay so why don't we just cut it away and then
bring the sides together.
Now I have an air bubble here.
I'll try to push it out.
It doesn't seem to be pushing out so I'll take my blade and pierce it and push it out.
Now this pen isn't very chubby so far.
We're going to make it taper from the opening.
The widest point will be in the center and then it will taper back down toward the end.
The way you accomplish that is to take another piece of clay that measures in width from
about I would say the point at which the pen begins to taper to about a half an inch from
the very end.
And what we'll do is we'll just wrap the pen again.
Now we're going to put a third sheet on and of course the third sheet is going to be smaller
yet.
About a half inch smaller from each side.
You can see that there's about a half inch here and about a half inch there.
Now we'll wrap this around the very middle.
And I find this easier than just trying to put the clay on and mush it and try to taper
it.
It's best I think if you start with approximately the right amount of clay wherever you want
it so that I have three thicknesses in the middle.
I have two thicknesses here and I have a single thickness toward the tip and toward the end.
Now we're just going to blend them together.
I'm going to take my palm, if you can see I'm just rolling lightly trying to get those
three sheets to merge.
Let's turn it around and do the same thing at the tip end of the pen.
Now I'm not pressing too hard here because if I press too hard the clay would really
just move right off.
So I've applied enough pressure you can see how now the clay is extending over the tip.
That doesn't bother me too much.
So I expected some of that to happen.
Now I'm taking my finger and I'm just going to blend the clay down toward the tip and
then I'll blend the clay in the same way toward the other end.
Okay that's pretty good.
Needs a little bit more work.
I might have to pull some of the clay at the end and at the tip back down.
That's looking pretty good.
Same thing here.
You really take your time with this step because you want a nice shape to the pen.
You don't want it to be indented or irregular.
Now find the tip, find the opening and then take your blade and cut.
And here's our pen ready to be covered with our flower cane.
Now I've taken the flower cane we made earlier and I've reduced it.
Now there are two ways of applying your slices.
One is to cut very thin slices.
Make sure that they're uniform and place each slice on the pen so there's no space in between.
There's another way.
You can cut a thicker slice with your fingers, flatten it out and you can see what happens.
And these slices could be applied as well.
It's kind of a different look.
You see more of the striping along the side of the cane.
What we're going to do is the first option which is to make very thin slices, the same
thickness and space them very close on the pen.
I'm going to start at the tip.
There's our first row.
You'll continue applying these slices until you've covered the whole pen.
Here we have our pen.
It's completely covered with our millefiori slices.
The small spaces have been filled in with slices that were reduced even more to make
them smaller.
Now we're going to take it and just roll it.
Once again you don't want to apply too much pressure.
You just want all those edges to fuse together.
What you don't want to do is you don't want to take your fingers and run it across the
slices to try to blend them because all you'll do is smear the image.
I think we're almost there.
Just continue rolling until the surface is smooth and the pieces are joined.
Now we're ready to bake our pen.
Here we have our baked pen.
Now we've got to get this cartridge in but guess what?
It's too long.
So we're going to compare it and I'm going to cut it about that point.
Normally I would do this over a garbage can just to avoid making a mess.
Cut it, take it, put it in and there we go.
It's done.
Now I have something to show you.
This is another pen I made.
If you take a look at it you can see that the surface is quite a bit shinier than the
one that we made.
Now the way I did this one was to wet sand it 400 then 600 grit wet dry sandpaper.
Then I took it to a buffer.
If you don't have a buffer you can use cotton cloth or linen and you'll get a nice shine
off of it that way.
Thank you for spending time with me and learning a few millifiori basics.
Stop by your local art materials or craft store to find the materials and tools that
we've used today.
If you're having problems locating any of those tools or you have any questions for
me you can contact me at dkato at tescat.com.
That's my email address.
You can also write to me at Polyform Products 1901 Estes Avenue Elk Grove Village Illinois
60007.
You can also call me there at 847-427-0020.
Now here are just a few of the numerous ways you might use your millifiori canes.
Do you like Gary Larson?
I think he's so funny.
What cats here?
Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.
What dogs here?
Blah blah blah Ralph.
Blah blah blah blah blah blah Ralph.
Blah blah blah.