Winding homeward

Wiwat Kamolpornwijit admits that coming up with his new designs has been fun and finishing them, assembling them is not his favorite part of the process.

While he has folded and sculpted polymer in his art, this ribbon-like necklace and another spiraled link necklace point to a departure and new experiments.

Wiwat won top honors in the 2015 Niche Awards in the professional polymer category. He maintains a rigorous schedule of shows and also supplies a long list of galleries with his works. Here’s more of Wiwat’s work on Smith Galleries’ site.

You can follow along with his new developments on Facebook.

Summer vacation

Did you miss me? It was a long drive home from Minnesota with a stop to visit family in Chicago and seemed a good time to unplug for a couple days. I’m back! Hope you’re enjoying some down time and summer fun too.

Heads full of ideas

The gardens outside Maureen Carlson’s facility in Minnesota provide a testing ground for outdoor polymer sculptures. Some have decorated the landscape for up to seventeen years.

Student Jacqui Stratton’s head has sat with others in the studio window for years, a product of one of Maureen’s Faces on Stone classes. We could hardly detect where the stone ended and the polymer began.

Polymer survived the seasons nicely on any number of garden sprites tucked among the vegetation and faces hung on fences. You can see more examples on my Instagram page. Class is over. We’re headed home with heads full of ideas for decorating our own homes and gardens.

Collaged transfers

These glowing hollow beads from Claire Maunsell are patterned with collaged pieces of laser transfers. The elegant mix of patterns shine through dark and distressed surfaces. The combination lends her beads an aura of a rich and mysterious past.

Claire’s added a number of collaged and hollow beads on her Flickr pages. Go there for your first-of-the-week jolt of inspiration.

We happened to be working on laser transfers in our weekend class in Minnesota. See how Maureen Carlson turned the transfer of her sprite into a sculpture and see some of our class pictures on Instagram.

Giveaway and discounts from friends

You can count on polymer friends! The gang over at ilove2craft.com offered to distract you with a giveaway and a discount today. They know that dangling shiny tools and juicy books will keep you happy while I’m off traveling and teaching.

Their giveaway basket includes: A mini Swellegant Dealio, a Pretty Darn Nifty Tool, and Christi’s two new books about dogs and dragons. Leave a comment below or like the post on PCD’s Facebook and you’re automatically in the running to win. I’ll pick a winner on Wednesday.

In the meanwhile, you can shop Christi Friesen, Lisa Pavelka or ilove2craft and enjoy a 15% discount until 10/31/2015 by including the PCD2015 code. Let’s hope our weekends are filled with lots of shiny distractions.

Strong simplicity

Jayne Flanagan’s (nellsdottir) necklaces caught my eye and you’ll be surprised at who visited Nell’s booth in Sydney.

I’m on the road and weary so you’ll have to unravel this mystery yourself from Jayne’s Instagram page or from Facebook or Pinterest, Her painted polymer pieces like these Squiggly beads have a strong and fashionable simplicity.

I have a few more hours of podcasts to enjoy as I drive across the midwest. More news from the road when I arrive at my destination tomorrow.

From Skinner blend to sunset

It’s your week at the beach with polymer. Today JoAnne St. James replicates Connecticut sunsets and beach scenes. She translates the sky colors into beautiful Skinner blends. It’s a short step from a blend to landscape.

A handful of shells, some sand, sun touching the water – JoAnne gives the scenes finishing touches and then turns them into wearable summer memories.

You can witness her magic on Facebook and Etsy and catch more beach bits on Pinterest. Her about page tells you her story.

Polymer seahorse rodeo

Be careful! This Seahorse Rodeo from Utah’s MaryAnne Loveless may rope you in and drag you under with patterns and colors and shapes.

MaryAnne often creates her beads and sculptures in big groups. A look at her Flickr gallery (also Pinterest) shows the logic of repeating a design until you get the feel of it and have worked out all the challenges and rough spots. You also see what an impression a big collection can make.

A tip of the beach hat to MaryAnne for bringing us these 3″ tall polymer broncos.

Polymer cover-up

Pennsylvania’s Beth Petricoin loves polymer and upcycling. A favorite shirt ruined by bleach spots could have been discarded or demoted but Beth couldn’t let that happen. She decided to hide the problem with a radiating design in polymer.

She fabricated the components from thin pieces of polymer cut out and applied with Sculpey Bake and Bond. “I worked in segments of about 6″ by 8″, curing in between segments to keep the areas for curing totally flat in the oven,” says Beth.

She details her project step-by-step in a blog post. She even laundered the shirt after finishing to test the glue’s strength and gives it a definite thumbs up.

“I can hardly wait to jazz up another piece of clothing! I can also see this idea put into use to cover up unwanted holes in clothing….lots of ideas running around in my head,” she admits.

Follow other of Beth’s polymer experiments on Flickr, Etsy, Pinterest and her blog. What’s in your closet begging for an upcycle?

Transferred history

Since you may have some playtime this weekend, I’ll leave you with the UK’s Jon Burgess. His sites are mecca for those who like abstract, geometric, random, organic or fractal-based patterns.

Jon’s been a longtime writer, illustrator and designer. “I have been exploring the backwaters of the various bits of software I use for many years now but have only recently found practical outlets for the designs I produce,” he explains.

Of course polymer is one of the practical outlets he hit upon. His tiles, coasters and beads often contain his image transfers whose hard digital lines have been softened with elegant, distressed edges and thin washes of ink.

Sure, the 1-2-3 polymer transfer steps he shows are straightforward. When he gets to step 12, the fun begins. From this almost-a-tutorial you get the idea of how he batters his pieces to inject them with history and intrigue.

Start on his Pinterest site to understand his aesthetic. Try Tumblr, his blog, Flickr, Etsy and Facebook. Then luxuriate in the patterns.

Sitting Pretty polymer

Canadian Kate Church refers to her work as sculptural puppetry combining the line and form of sculpture with the playful anima of puppetry. Here in the recent Sitting Pretty a dancer drapes herself on a sofa as she waits for her tutu.

Kate used to create figures for Cirque du Soleil which were sold around the world.

Now she creates art and teaches polymer, cloth and wire sculptural workshops that are on the bucket lists of many polymer artists.

Kate’s freshened her website making it easier to access her rich and spritely archives.

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