Polymer Clay Daily

Polymer in relief

Annie Laura's garden in relief on PolymerClayDaily.com

Though she often uses polymer as a form for her electroformed copper work, Annie Laura (AnnieLauraHandmade) sometimes features the clay itself, as in this relief of a flower from her garden.

She created a deep mold of the flower. Its depth gives the bead startling dimension. The painted colors are scrumptious and she finished by highlighting each bud with a dab of clear coating.

Have a look at Annie Laura’s lovely electroformed pieces. When she needs a break from metal and glass work, she creates another batch of her polymer ammonites and sea urchins that integrate well with other media. What a pleasure to work with a material that offers such versatility.

Annie Laura’s full name and location weren’t easy to find. Can you help fill in the blanks?

Have a great weekend and join us at Studio Mojo for a look at other wild and wonderful ways to use polymer.

Polymer reruns

Steven on PCDaily

Vintage celluloid pieces are the starting point for California’s Laurel Steven’s New Old series of pendants and brooches. “In this series I’m combining molded pieces of vintage bits with more modern textures,” she explains.

Steven on PCDaily

She revives and refashions her extensive collection of celluloid by molding polymer versions of the originals and updating them with today’s colors then pairing them with trendy textured backgrounds.

Laurel plays with other techniques that you can see on Facebook, on Flickr, on Pinterest and in her Etsy shop. You can sense that she’s drawn to the old souls of the celluloid florals and enjoys giving these early plastics a second chance in polymer.

Shabby polymer

Niese on PCDaily

If you’re a fan of distressed and worn pieces that look like they spent a previous life in a cottage, you’ll like Sandra DeYoung Niese’s polymer pendants and beads.

Niese on PCDaily

Sandra says the molded beads remind her of her grandmother.

She updates her romantic shabby look with bright contemporary colors. The highlights have been sanded off to expose dark colored polymer below. See more of her rustic line on Flickr, her Etsy site and on Facebook.

Understated polymer

These holiday polymer earrings from Michigan’s Sandra DeYoung-Niese may calm you in a hectic week.

Sandra created her own mold from a real evergreen branch. It’s a subtle holiday image with just a touch of red and a dusting of snow.

Wander slowly through her understated Etsy items and her Flickr site where the soothing vibe continues. Breathe!

Polymer shoe-in

Jacqueline Cherie has retrieved her studio from storage and unpacked all the molds she researched and collected.

You’ve probably run across images in books like these that feature her polymer pieces which were meticulously rendered and based on antiquities, pre-Columbian images and Asian icons.

This polymer encrusted shoe, created for a contest several years ago, still stuns. Here’s a box and a small container from her collection.

Welcome Jacqueline back after her three-year breather and expect to see photos of her new works posted soon.

Ugly molds for beautiful pendants

Pennsylvania outdoor girl Lynn Lunger (UnaOdd) offers the processes she’s developed for making the deep molds that form her signature Rustic Nature Polymer Pendants.

Her free tutorial shows you the tools you’ll need to make what she calls her ugly molds. It details every step with photographs.

Spring blossoms and budding plants take on new life. See where she finds inspiration and examine more of her finished work on her Flickr page.

You may prefer to bypass mold-making and shop for one of the pendants on her Etsy site. Either way we owe Lynn a big thank you for her generosity in sharing her tips and tricks with us. Nice to start the week with a cool freebie.

Pantone polymer

Unaodd’s Lynn Lunger was inspired by Pantone and spring seed catalogs. She mixed her own Tangerine Tango, Pantone’s color of the year, and started developing her 2012 palette.

Lynn confesses to a crisper drawer full of extra flower seeds from years past. That doesn’t stop her from considering if she should buy some of the new ones offered in this year’s crop of February garden catalogs.

In an effort to resist giving in to seed acquisition, she started filling custom-made silicone molds with her new polymer colors. Imprints of last years’ blooms had been pressed to make the forms. The resulting polymer beads give us visual taste of spring.

What’s happening in Lynn’s studio usually reflects what’s growing outside and her blog is a good garden and studio read. Think spring this weekend.

Making polymer relics

Christine Damm reveals a bit about her Solstice Necklace in current and upcoming posts on her blog.

Her concepts have coalesed into a teachable format that she’ll debut at ArtBLISS in Washington, D.C. in late September. Her class is called Whimsical Blooms.

Christine makes molds of her favorite found items but that’s just the start. “The part of me that enters into the mix then is in how I color these copies and antique them and arrange them into wearable art. They are transformed by what I add to their history and their story becomes part of my story,” she says.

Today’s important tip, “You don’t have to use the whole image. You can use a mold you’ve made of an antique button but use a piece of polymer clay that’s larger than the impression so you have a “relic”– an irregular shape that looks like it has disintegrated somewhat in the aging process. You can flatten edges or texture them with a tool or a texture sheet. I like to thin the edges out to create the illusion of disintegration even more.” See this necklace and her experiments up close on her Flickr site. Thanks to Margit Böhmer for the link!

About face in polymer

Inveterate polymer experimenter Dee Wilder created these new story beads using Maureen Carlson’s new small face bead molds. Here’s the back of Dee’s creations. She made not only beads but a series of rings as well.

These somber looking faces can be embellished and manipulated to make their story serious or silly or something in between.

One of Maureen’s original beads totems stares at me from the kitchen window sill. Now I can make more to poke up out of the garden. I was thinking of whipping up these plant stakes in polymer too. (I’d much rather do that than spread mulch!) Enjoy your weekend in the garden or the studio.