Music to my ears

Leonini makes polymer music on PolymerClayDaily.com

Italy’s Cecilia Leonini (ImpastArte) hands us a pun with these long curls of musical score. It’s a clever and chic use of transfers (I’m guessing transfers).

“My background is music and I taught piano for many years,” says Cecilia. “For me the clay is the synthesis of all the arts that I love.” And we love the play on words that these earrings allow us. Where does your love show in your work?

Cecilia usually works in bright hot colors that fit perfectly on the FoltBolt site with lots more on Facebook, Instagram, Etsy, and Flickr.

Leftover polymer

Kottelat earrings on PolymerClayDaily.com

These fabric-like earrings were assembled by France’s Maryvonne Kottelat.

The patterns were leftovers from a class taught by Hélène Jeanclaude and sponsored by Cernit. Here are Maryvonne’s blog, and Facebook,

Be warned that following the links will send you down a rabbit hole into a world of glowing translucent patterns (Cernit’s specialty) tucked among surfaces screened, painted and punched with French flair.

Carried by color

These breezy, summery earrings from Spain’s Elena Fernandez Guijarro are made from scrap clay pieces laid next to each other in an easy, casual way.

Sometimes we forget about easy and casual. Color carries Elena’s design forward.

Try going simple and let color carry your work along.

Spring flowers

Enjoy a browse through Jeffrey Lloyd Dever’s site. It’s filled with what look like May flowers.

Newer works, including his 2017 Niche Award winner, are on Facebook.

I’m mostly speechless today.

Balanced bowl and a TP trick

Boston’s Betsy Baker was pushing hard to get ready for the St. Paul ACC show last week. She gave herself a little diversion from jewelry production to make a series of ring bowls which share the same grunge-meets-elegant aesthetic. The copper colored lining on this one plays nicely against the concrete-like exterior.

If you look at Betsy’s Instagram, you can see how she loads her post earrings into the oven. Wouldn’t you guess that those are toilet paper rolls that have been flattened and pierced with holes for the posts?

Her improvised holder allows her to fire the front of the earrings and hold them upright so that any back details are baked at the same time. When you’re preparing for shows, every time-saving trick helps.

A polymer builder

Croatia’s Nikolina Otrzan loads her shapes with rough textures and subtle colors. These square earrings are an outgrowth of her boxes, tubes and cubes series. Short sections of dark tubes line up into squares.

Seems very simple but Nik goes to great lengths to construct her pieces, paying attention every detail. Now that she’s worked out her own tricks for hollow forms, she’s expanding the jewelry she makes from them.

A walk through her Flickr site or Instagram shows you how her designs are evolving. Her tutorials contain scads of photos that explain every step. She offers a handful of instructions on Etsy and classes on CraftArtEdu. Few polymer artists are as meticulous about how their work is built as Nikolina.

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