Spring blossoms down under

Fee (PickledGingerJewellery) gets ready for AU spring with these blooms on PolymerClayDaily.com

Australia’s Fee (PickeledGingerJewellery) is getting ready for spring with these mixed media hollow polymer flowers. The petals on these 3″ long blooms are made from leather.

Fee perfected the hollow bulb for her jellyfish earrings and the same shape comes in handy here.

They look like small pretty explosions. And they’re sold out already.

Leather polymer

Del Roussel and others play with the new leather effect Fimo clay on PolymerClayDaily.com

France’s Del Roussel (EnRibambelle) has been experimenting with Fimo’s new Leather Effects clay on Instagram.

These 3-layer earrings make a lightweight feathery look for summer. I’m guessing the imitation leather is easy to cut and has some distinct characteristics that give it flexibility and texture.

Ginger Davis Allman (BlueBottleTree) reviewed it and Klio Tsaliki shows how she’s sewed it on Flickr. The EU artists and a few early adopters are whetting our appetites for this new variation of clay.

Leather, wire, cactus imposters

Track polymer and resin artist Camille Young on Flickr as she creates jewelry art every day during June. (Usually gamer icons are the subject of her art.) A Tucson resident, Camille didn’t have to look far for a model for this cactus cuff.

She makes a fabulous faux barbed wire which she used for a Western style eyeglass leash. Here’s her original faux barbed wire tutorial. The more recent version makes use of Sculpey SuperFlex clay baked over Stretch Magic cord.

Patty Barnes faux leather biker cuff was named the co-grand prize winner in the Rings & Things contest. Patty says that, “The use of polymer clay to create the cuff allowed me to explore a variety of surface textures, decorations and embellishments.” She’s moving on to punk, western, disco and other versions. Thanks to Janice Abarbanel, Susan Lomuto and others for passing this link along.

Travel toys and tutorials

The Les Ethiopiques site is full of free tutorials and French polymer fun that will keep you kids busy in the back seat while I travel to Colorado for a week in the mountains. With any luck, I’ll keep posting daily about old friends, new products and moose.

Les Ethiopique’s faux leather ties in nicely with this week’s earlier Biker Chick post. Though her tutorials are in French, the photos say it all and you needn’t translate to get the gist. Just look for “tuto” and click away. Her generosity in creating all these free how-to’s is refreshing.

Thanks to Eva Ménager for the link. Have a refreshing weekend!