Coming to blows with polymer

Vancouver’s Joan Tayler is offering an early holiday treat. Gift yourself her 9-page polymer whistle tutorial and you’ll be able to create your own presents – useful zipper pulls, clever pendants or noisy kids’ toys.

“In spite of the simplicity of this design it has taken me years of small changes to come up with an efficient way to make a polymer clay whistle,” Joan admits.

Joan taught me her method this summer. I had success on my first try and I’ve been bugging her to publish a tutorial ever since. My nagging paid off! The tutorial spells out the steps every which way – in photos, in words, and with drawings.

Joan turns her whistles into lovely birds and hides them under gently draped leaves. StudioMojo subscribers will hear me toot my whistles in tomorrow’s edition. I don’t often gush but making whistles is a special skill that Joan has made available for the rest of us.

Twofer Friday

It’s a twofer Friday to tide you through the weekend.

Cecelia Leonini’s Surreal necklace stands on its own even as it contains echoes from Iris Mishly, Nikolina Otrzan and other artists working with textures and inks. (Cecelia credits Nikolina’s and Iris’ tutorials.)

Note how the three main pieces were cut from one image. This painterly approach is being played with widely and moves polymer in new directions. Cecelia’s progress is documented on Flickr and Facebook.

If you’re looking for some warmth this weekend, let Russia’s Anna Krichevskaya bundle you up in a tweedy blue bangle. The heathered colors of her extruded faux knit resemble the big bulky sweaters sure to beat the chill. There’s more on Flickr. Stay warm.

Meeting your quota

To meet his quota of 10-12 polymer heart pins each day, Ron Lehocky has to get up early (we shot this video at 7:00 a.m.) and take advantage of every spare moment.

Funny how that daily quota has added up to 27,000 hearts in 9 years! All the proceeds support the Kentucky Kids Center where he is also a physician.

Used to the routine, Ron’s hands moved gracefully and effortlessly as we chatted. He’s refined his process to 3 steps which he shows in this demo. A few hundred hearts are always waiting for sanding and finishing which he does as he watches TV or listens to music. To purchase hearts, contact Ron on Facebook or via email. Watch the video here.

In this weekend’s StudioMojo, Ron continues talking about his studio habits, his motivation, and his own designs. Join us on StudioMojo if you’d like more.

Sunday school

Those of us who love both technology and polymer are ecstatic that Mags Bonham will teach an online Craftcast class that explains how to cut polymer using the computer and a Silhouette Cameo printer/cutter. That’s on Sunday at 12:00 noon (EST). I plan to be in the front row (virtually) with the rest of you artist/nerds.

More scrap tweaks

Building on yesterday’s tutorial, we look at how France’s Anne-Sophie Bonnay tweaks her scrap stripes, gouging across them to create a woven pattern.

She enhances the effect by impressing the polymer with a fabric texture.

Anne-Sophie offers more items made from the scrap sheet on her web site.

She even uses the curly gouged out strings, pressing them onto a solid colored sheet to create an abstract pattern. Her imitation tiger’s eye pattern is another riff on this scrap stripe theme.

Scrappy polymer

Crisp fall days make colors brights and simple masks funnier. Look at these new pins from Susan Hyde (she’s mostly on Facebook).

A flat oval polymer face with a circle cut out gets her started on completely silly faces. A few dots and strings of clay turn into crazily raised eyebrows, a moustache or a glob of hair. A slice of any old cane will work for eyes.

Don’t forget teeth or a tongue and everybody gets a pair of jump ring earrings. Perfect Halloween favors.

Start from scrap

As long as we’re going for easy and effective art, check out Debbie Crothers’ scrappy cane tutorial.

I learned a similar version from Carol Blackburn who tames the tutorial and turns the results into tidy stripes and precise geometrics. Any way you handle this tute, it’s a great one to have at your disposal.

Polymer epiphany

“Do you know the moment at night — right before you fall asleep? That’s when I sometimes get the best ideas. Last night — out of nowhere — that very detailed picture of an earring design popped up right in front of my inner eye….so I had to try it today. They’re in the oven right now,” said Bettina Welker in describing a recent polymer epiphany.

Georg Dinkel caught this photo of Bettina wearing her new creations at the recent Staedtler Fimo Symposium in Paris. Bettina’s cutout shapes are heavily textured and often stacked or moving.

She calls her series The Place In Between and perhaps this week your best ideas are hiding in some overlooked spot, just waiting for you to relax and accept them.

There’s a free Pin-to-Pendant Converter tutorial on Bettina’s revamped site in case your customers, like hers, want to wear their jewelry in various ways.

You can find more of Bettina’s work and tutorials on Facebook, Pinterest, I-Pernity and Etsy.

Moving polymer

Jeanette Kandray has been working in polymer for over 15 years. She’s been a go-to person for the Columbus, Ohio guild and we’re sad to see her go.

But even as she prepared to move to Pittsburgh, PA to be near family, the guild benefitted. She destashed her studio and showered guild members with supplies. Tonight the guild will say farewell.

In recent years Jeanette found her voice, developing the Shadow Cane (shown at right) and refining her own crackle technique (above) that you can read about in her free tutorial on the Sculpey site.

Our art usually reflects our life. Surrounded by packing boxes, Jeanette began making polymer drawers and boxes to match her beads and pendants. Now she’s looking forward to making bigger boxes and venturing away from jewelry. Here she is on Flickr, Pinterest and Etsy. Thanks, Jeanette!

Free I Love Tools

Sign up now for the sixth edition of I Love Tools on Craftcast next Wednesday (September 17) at 7:30 PM. This free webinar includes me and five other instructors talking about our latest cool tools – new from manufacturers or rediscovered from your kitchen. (You’ll be surprised at what you can do with a coffee grinder!)

Prizes, coupons and an evening of fun. Can’t make it at that time? Register to receive a recap and notes from the session.

Weathered facets

These Weathered Polymer Bicones from Germany’s Margit Bohmer are faceted then colored in a way that makes them look like stained glass.

The colored facets are a new twist in Margit’s signature rainbow palette. She’s also added the weathering that she learned in a Staci Louise tutorial.

More and more we see techniques mutating across boundaries. You can be proud to be part of such a sharing community.

Here’s Margit’s Etsy shop.

Can cane

No matter how sophisticated polymer art becomes, the color and simplicity of basic canes is still one of its most alluring and enduring charms. This week I stumbled upon this Fancy necklace from Pier Voulkos. It’s twenty-three years old and still fresh and, well, fancy! Note how she used plastic-coated telephone wire to unobtrusively attach the dangles into the composition.

The necklace now resides in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts Botson (donated by Lindly Haunani).

This week I was happy to find Kim Korringa (on Facebook) mixing up 19 pounds worth of her signature canes that carry on the cane tradition. Here’s a free tutorial that shows Kim’s Fairy Wing earrings and the secret to her cane methods from my Global Perspectives book.

Kim Arden’s bright canes follow in Pier’s footsteps with the addition of translucent tricks. Laura Tabakman’s muted translucent canes veer off in another direction.

After a month on vacation, I was happy to be greeted by so many reminders of polymer’s vibrant history and your continuing discoveries.

Balloons and polymer

Spain’s Sona Grigoryan starts your week with a new way to create transparent hollow beads like the ones pictured here. See all her works on Flickr.

She has generously uploaded a few photos that give you the basic instructions.

Her method involves fine wire and small balloons! The deflating balloon pulls the raw clay inward and the wire helps keep the shape.

It’s tempting to try a trick with such easy ingredients. A few hours after it was posted Texas’ Joey Barnes already put her spin on a test bead (a great diversion during the Super Bowl).

‹ 1 … 3 4 5 … 9 ›