Christine Damm’s article on wire and polymer in the summer issue of Belle Armoire Jewelry tempts me to try her loose, eclectic style. I’m on a tribal, primitive jag this week that you can see in her copper and faux jade cuff. The polymer pieces on her Stories They Tell site and Flickr page hint at tales from other times.
Her husband formed the cuff from repurposed copper flashing. The texture is from a Cool Tools plate. (Cool Tools carries mostly metal clay tools and many of them can be used on polymer as well.)
Sarajane Helm’s site is my favorite source for out-of-the-ordinary polymer clay tools and supplies. This weekend I needed custom made rubber stamps so I headed to the ReadyStamp form on her site. 
If there’s a new product (like these inks), she’s researched and compared it. Last month I traipsed all over town looking for varnish and ended up ordering from her online link.
Each time I go to her site, I spend time with her collection of tattooed and Victorian hand beads. They fascinate me and now they’re for sale on her Etsy site.
Thanks to Sarajane for her persistence in finding the best products and for her generosity in sharing with the rest of us. You’ll find lots of treasures buried in her information-rich site.
This colorful bangle by Belgium’s Moïse Vanden Broeck traps extruded canes between two polymer clay plates. Moise brings a metalworker’s eye to his polymer work as in this additional bracelet design and these rings.
He also explains how to create a cutter tool using rotary blades which is an update on the original tube bead cutter by Elise Winters.
Nice to have a few mental exercises to get us in shape for the studio week ahead.
by Cynthia Tinapple on April 15, 2009 · 4 comments
by Cynthia Tinapple on March 18, 2009 · 4 comments
I’m cobbling together a post from your emails since I’m on vacation and laptop time is limited.
In response to yesterday’s post, Patty Barnes describes how she makes her Kemper cutters organized and portable.
“Since I have many sets of Kemper cutters and I like to take them to classes and meetings, I used a metal tin to hold them.
I pressed scrap clay inside the bottom of the tin so that it was about ½” thick. I cut out each shape with the cutters and baked the entire tin. Coating the cutters with cornstarch or ArmorAll and leaving the cutters in place during the baking helps. Polymer clay shrinks a tiny amount and leaving the cutters in place during baking makes for a better fit.”
Kylee Milner (Lunes Bijoux) sent along the link to some versatile, inexpensive pendant bails she found on Ebay.
Art Jewelry Magazine has two articles about Melanie West in their current issue. One is a look at Melanie’s solar-powered home and studio. The other is a tutorial on bonding seamless polymer over aluminum cuff armatures.
Today’s photo is from the Artful Home catalog where I searched on polymer clay and came up with four pages of mouthwatering jewelry and furniture. The credenza entitled Bending Birches by J.M. Syron and Bonnie Bishoff is covered with polymer clay marquetry. Here’s their home site.
