Mountain collaboration

Thank you for your patience as I unhooked myself from the blogisphere last week. This wall art collaborative collage by Ann Kruglak and Nan Roche reflects the calming colors and dramatic textures that surrounded us in the mountains.

The piece combines branches and a rock from nature. The deeply weathered wood and other elements were molded and replicated in polymer.

The duo’s love of nature speaks strongly. Ann works tirelessly, selling her work to benefit the rainforests with 100% of her proceeds going to a land conservancy charity.

Nan, widely heralded as a seminal figure in the polymer community and author of The New Clay (first published in 1991), is now dipping her toe into the social media pool and heading toward her studio after a long hiatus. You’ll find her on Facebook and Pinterest for now.

If you’d like to learn more about Nan, join StudioMojo, the weekend newsletter, where she chats candidly in a video interview in Saturday’s edition.

Bandwidth challenged

Very limited bandwidth so no pictures today. Check Instagram.

Whirling polymer

Petra Nemravova’s brooch is a whirl of words surrounded by spinning hologram beads. The motion and energy of this piece resonate with me as I pack and prepare for a summer break. Check in on Petra on Facebook and her site.

Summer break

Can’t say how much I’ll post during my weeklong break. We’ll leave it to chance, mood and weather. If you miss your daily dose, browse the PCD archives in the column at the right (10 years worth this month) and pop over to Instagram for pictures. Have a great weekend.

Back-to-school polymer

Tamara Shea’s Pile O’ Books necklace kicks off the back-to-school season (and there’s a sale at her Etsy shop).

Tamara’s Block Party Press business has grown steadily since she first jumped online seven years ago when her sons were young and she wanted to find a way to stay at home with them.

She draws her own designs, carves her stamps, and cuts out her polymer components. Then she paints and distresses them.

Tamara’s moved her newsy updates to Facebook and opened a second online shop as her boys have grown and her art interests expanded. She shares her inspirations and photos on Instagram.

Coincidental polymer art

Rebecca Watkins simplifies our Wednesday and reminds us that it’s still possible to create colorful, cheery, fashionable art by stringing big round polymer balls on a cable.

Artybecca’s beads are colored with dots of shared colors and textured with circles. A dark wash of paint brings out the lines.

The colors are “coincidental” (as she explains on her blog) and happen to match everything in her closet. She wears them here.

Nothing forced or fussy about this necklace. No laborious techniques. A smooth finish and a nice polish and they’re good to go.

Take a deep breath, lighten up on the expectations, and have some fun. See more of Rebecca on Facebook and Flickr. You may enjoy reading about how she “blew up” a perfectly good cane to get back to the big patterns she prefers.

Wise polymer

The Czech Republic’s young Dana Phamova (Fruitensse) greets you with a charming little owl. Dana’s always been a whiz with color and now she’s totally taken with texture.

You’ll see that she works like most of us, in the few remaining uncluttered inches on our work surfaces. She blames the owl for her messy desk.

You may want to study Dana’s heavily textured earrings and her shimmering series of dangles. She updates most regularly on Facebook and you can also find her on Flickr.

Read about how Dana founded the online Polymer Clay Heaven, a series of 18 tutorials by Czech artists.

Sleight of hand in polymer

Italy’s Cecilia Leonini plays an optical trick as she tinkers with the illusions created by painter Victor Vasarely. Could she create a 2D piece with a 3D effect by using color and hand cut lines?

What you may think are beads at the left are quite flat pieces of polymer colored and grooved to fool the eye.

Cecilia’s teaser may give your brain a Monday stretch. Follow her tricks on Flickr, Etsy and Facebook.

Bowled over

Sometimes it’s good to get nervous about trades among friends and, guess what, we all do it. That mixture of fear and competition can motivate us to try harder.

Even longtime artist and Sculpey brand ambassador Syndee Holt admits that this was her second attempt at making little 2 1/2″ diameter polymer bowls for an upcoming swap. She wanted to get her new design just right so she scrapped the first batch and kept going until she felt comfortable. Let the guessing begin about how she achieved this multi-color stone-like effect.

Kim Arden’s tell-all

In the September/October issue of Polymer Cafe magazine, Kim Arden reveals how she creates her summer flower pendants. Along with a profile written by Trina Williams, Kim includes a complete tutorial.

She shows how to stack bright and translucent cane slices over a scrap background to build pendants that have color, depth and attitude. Here’s PCD’s first look at Kim’s design from last year.

Read more about Kim on Facebook and her site. See what Syndee’s experimenting with on her blog and on the Sculpey site.

Phone to polymer

Colored laser transfers are popping up again on all kinds of shapes. France’s Sonya Girodon transferred some favorite image patterns onto square beads to create these fetching earrings.

Then Australia’s Wendy Jorre de st Jorre (who is a caner at heart) couldn’t resist putting her dogs on her arm using transfers draped over domed oval bases to create a graceful and heartfelt bracelet.

Wendy was following Debbie Crothers’ nicely presented CraftArtEdu tutorial which shows how to shape the beads and add spatters and bits of sparkle.

With all the images we’re accumulating on phones and cameras it’s great to come up with ways to put our photos to use.

See more of Sonya on Pinterest, Flickr and Facebook. Catch Wendy on Facebook, her site, Pinterest and in this interview on Blue Bottle Tree.

Sombre Wednesday

Lina Takhautdinova (Wildhorn) introduces us to the world of dark dressers and stylenoir. Goth meets high fashion in St. Petersburg. Lina pairs upcycled leather, coarse fabric, and aged silver with her own polymer antlers and imitation stones.

She refers to her colors as sombre and you’ll note hashtags that range from avantgarde to postapocalyptic. A short interview on StyleNoir.com gives you a better idea of Lina’s aesthetic and worklife. The best place to see her work is on Instagram and Pinterest. Keep up with her latest news on Facebook.

If you were overwhelmed by the color on Monday and Tuesday’s PCD posts, this should cleanse your palette.

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