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.