by Cynthia Tinapple on January 2, 2012 · 7 comments
“Paciorky means necklace or beads in Ukrainian,” says Christine Bondar (dzjunka online). Christine’s extruded and carved Amazon River polymer beads offer variations on techniques spread by Vera Kleist and Margit Böhmer.
You’ll see developments in that part of the world on Maria Petkova’s Bulgarian blog that features artists mostly from Eastern Europe as polymer continues to gain popularity.
I’ll be writing a book on global polymer this year and I’m interested in hearing your ideas on what the story should be about. And I’d love to learn about new artists you’ve run into. We’re off and running into 2012!
by Laurie Prophater on November 24, 2011 · 5 comments
When Karen Lorene, the owner of Facere Jewelry Art Gallery, was approaching this milestone birthday, she decided to throw a party for herself. She had ”…the idea of inviting seventy artists to each pick a year during my lifetime and make a piece of jewelry based on that year. Some pieces have made us double over in laughter and a couple are so moving they make me choke up even to talk about them.”
Follow this link to Celebrating 70. You will recognize several artists from the polymer world and some others may inspire you take the what if road to a new design. I will be featuring many of the non-polymer artists on ornamentalelements.com in the future posts.
guest post by Laurie Prophater
Rather that looking at classic images, this time I searched my family tree for inspiration for a polymer face cane. I never knew my maternal grandmother but I cherished a pin that captured her beauty as a young girl. I decided to recreate that image in my latest mosaic cane.
The cane, which I built from extruded squares in six sections, measured 5″ x 7″ x 1-1/2″. Read more about it in the post, Grand mama, what big eyes you have!, on my blog.
guest post from Julie Eakes
by Cynthia Tinapple on October 10, 2011 · 5 comments
It’s difficult to pinpoint what makes these polymer brooches from KatchaT so appealing. Smooth rounded edges make them touchable. The scattered dots of extruded color slices look like confetti and add a party atmosphere.
Their yin/yang colors and shapes bounce your attention back and forth.
The Voila site chose them as winners in their competition this month.
KatchaT is an au pair from Czech Repulic who’s living in Aberdeen, Scotland. See more of her work in her Voila gallery.
