Croatia’s Nikolina Otrzan can’t stop churning out new ideas!
Lately she’s obsessed with geometry, cutting thick chunks of terrazzo-like polymer patterns and stacking them together at varying angles.
Her fan club is waiting patiently at Etsy hoping that some of these new pieces will make their way into her shop.
In the meanwhile you can see Nikolina’s work on Facebook, Flickr, Pinterest and learn some of her tricks on CraftArtEdu.
These mismatched black and white striped cutout earrings are lightweight, fashionable and show a clever use of graduated templates. They’re from Connecticut’s Libby Mills who shared a work table with me in Virginia.
Libby’s fond of clean, simple designs and all last week I admired her growing collection of canes. Look at more of Libby’s works on Flickr, Pinterest, and Instagram while I catch my breath after a lovely road trip.
Of course you’d guess that Baltimore’s Linda Pearl was a dog lover from her bowls in the swap at the Virginia conference. You might also sense that her background is in pottery. And her shapes and treatments have a distinctly Japanese feel to them.
She showed me how she cut a shape and let it slump inside a hemisphere cake bowl creating a graceful shallow dish shape.
She transferred her images from toner copies and played with various textures and metallic finishes.
Linda’s Facebook page is pretty sparse and she swears that better online presence is on her to-do list. Click on the images here to see more.
This crop of bowls was a particularly good one and we’ll cover it more completely in Saturday’s StudioMojo.
Lindly Haunani opened a box of her new “Spring Gelato” tinted translucent beads ready for stringing and our mouths watered at their lusciousness. The edges of the canes were accented with embossing powders. The petals are gently pinched, and shaped. They’re drilled after baking. More on Facebook.
Lindly works mise en place, creating all the components for her limited editions before she begins the assembly process.
PCD will unveil a bit more from Virginia tomorrow and reveal a more comprehensive wrap-up on this weekend’s StudioMojo.
Carol Blackburn shaped these bright little polymer purses to accommodate a small perfume atomizer in case the wearer needed to refresh. She shows an open purse here. See more of her incredibly sharp patterns (canes) and crisp colors on Flickr.
You’d think the polymer groupies gathered in Virginia would be out of ideas after 26 years but the sparks are still flying. PCD will feature some of the new ideas from here at the end of the week. StudioMojo will contain even more of the newest tips and tricks in the Saturday newsletter.
Scrap from Jon Anderson’s studio in Bali made its way to Ron Lehocky’s workroom in Louisville.
Through all sorts of serendipitous connections and with a great deal of fun and intrigue, Jon’s polymer scrap is raising hundreds of dollars for the Kids Project in Kentucky.
You can see pictures of more of Ron’s results by clicking on the image.
He nearly discarded Jon’s canes that had welded themselves together in transit. What are you doing with your scrap? Are you overlooking treasures?
There’s more to the story! Jon is sending another batch of what he calls polymer cheese (more securely packaged this time) when Barb Alexander’s tour arrives in Bali soon.
The post I meant to show today is back at home and I’m on the road to my first conference of the season so today I’ll serve up my own work.
My intention is to inlay larger areas of pattern into the wood pieces turned by my husband. This vase is made of spalted maple.
The polymer diamond shapes were cut from my stash of scrap canes.
Funny how even scrap takes on an artist’s style. There’s no escaping it so you might as well feature it. You can see more of my recent work on Instagram or my website. I’ll be teaching my inlay methods at the French Lick Atelier in June in Indiana.
There’s a zen vibe to Elizabeth Wood’s Instagram pictures. Each square photo focuses on her daily polymer bead close up.
Her new blog is equally unusual, with no pictures (whaaa?) and brief, insightful posts.
She explains her approach by saying that her work “…utilizes everyday materials like polymer, paint, thread, and base metals to remind us that beautiful lives are usually made up of ordinary things.”
This is all part of Elizabeth’s 365 Project that she started in January. Her goal is to get better at noticing the beautiful ordinary in life, to loosen up her work methods, and to explore bead making in a more in-depth way.
Take a deep breath, smile and enjoy your beautiful weekend.
Reversible, articulated and flexible – these three adjectives have defined the design ideas that France’s Olga Nicolas has pursued in polymer.
The dangles on these earrings can be removed and flipped over to reveal another pattern on the second side. On her Flickr pages you can see the results of recent research – articulated bracelets, clever magnetic closures, hidden hooks and buttons.
Olga notes that her ideas have “ripened and evolved…” as she looked for well-designed closures, comfortable bracelets and earrings that offered variation.
See other research results from Olga on Facebook and Pinterest.
France’s Nadege Honey telegraphs messages through her Dots and Dashes jewelry. This necklace says “Life is beautiful.”
“I wanted to create jewelry with meaning, where the piece itself is not the main focus, but rather the message is,” says Nadege. Decipher the Morse code of Happy Birthday, Thank You and other phrases in her Etsy shop.
You don’t need to know Morse code to enjoy the clear colors and graphic combinations in Nadege’s pieces which are best seen on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook and her site.
Here’s a springy page of brooches from her design journal.
