Mountain landscape

Unless I can find a way to outfox the limited wifi at our mountain campus in Colorado, PCD will be on hiatus this week. Creative juices are flowing but we’re pretty much unplugged digitally. I’ll stop banging my head against the recalcitrant router.

In the meanwhile, enjoy this swap item made by Ginger Davis Allman (BlueBottleTree). It’s a great representation of the vistas we’re enjoying.

Ginger started with a slice of a white-to-blue blended cane. Then she stacked six wavy layers of various colors of polymer to create a beautiful mountain landscape. As an added surprise, she mixed glow-in-the-dark powders into the base layer cane so that the night sky lights up in the dark.

We’ll soak up nature and be back to our regular schedule next week.

Let go and see what happens

Libby Mills lets nature inspire her world of geometry on PolymerClayDaily

Swap anxiety hits everyone! Connecticut’s Libby Mills felt threatened by the requirement that swap items must be “nature-inspired.”

Look at how she invites nature into her geometrically-inspired comfort zone! She stacks irregularly shaped layers into lovely natural forms.

As we pack our supplies for a week of claying, we laugh at ourselves for worrying. Sometimes you just need to breathe, trust, let go, and see what happens.

In my rush to get everything done before I leave, I popped a fresh video into this week’s StudioMojo which is all set for Saturday delivery. I’ll be traveling so next week’s PCD posts may be sporadic. And StudioMojo will be full of mountain air polymer (whatever that means). Come find out!

Whipped into shape

Nancy Nearing brings veneers to life with dimension on PolymerClayDaily.com

What a difference dimension makes! Ohio’s Nancy Nearing has been on a roll since taking Lindly Haunani’s class.

The flat veneers below are very much Lindly-inspired but they are infused with Nancy’s aesthetic.

When Nancy ruffles and bends

and sculpts the flat collages, she takes them to a whole different place.

Nancy’s a neighbor so I caught this project mid-process. They’re not even on her Instagram yet! We will revisit them when she adds more flowery details and mounts them in shadow boxes.

Spring blossoms down under

Fee (PickledGingerJewellery) gets ready for AU spring with these blooms on PolymerClayDaily.com

Australia’s Fee (PickeledGingerJewellery) is getting ready for spring with these mixed media hollow polymer flowers. The petals on these 3″ long blooms are made from leather.

Fee perfected the hollow bulb for her jellyfish earrings and the same shape comes in handy here.

They look like small pretty explosions. And they’re sold out already.

Swimming upstream on Monday

Sonya Girodon's multi-media fish swim on the wall on PolymerClayDaily

France’s Sonya Girodon created these two multi-media fish, Franky and Rose, with paper mache bodies then gave them wire fins and dazzling scales made of polymer veneers.

They’re mounted on an 8″x8″ painted wooden frame where they wait for a wall to swim on.

Just a couple of happy fish to start your week.

A closer look

Pilar Rodríguez Domínguez makes us look closely at her skillfully blended canes on PolymerClayDaily

Let’s close a sunny week with a sunny brooch from Canary Islands’ Pilar Rodríguez Domínguez (Amatista). I snagged this from her Instagram a little while ago and kept returning for another look.

That’s a sure sign that there’s something interesting going on. The canes (available on Etsy) have a stained-glass quality about them. There’s a sensual, sinewy feel too.

It takes a moment for all the blends and colors to register. It must be the fine dark line between elements that makes these bright colors read so well.

Figuring out what makes a piece of art grab us is part of what we’ll be looking at over at StudioMojo this weekend. You’d be surprised what you can learn by taking the time for a closer look. Join us.

Luminous hearts

Follow Ron Lehocky and his collaborative hearts on Instagram via PolymerClayDaily.com

There’s a lovely luminosity about these most recent hearts from Kentucky’s Ron Lehocky. The gold dots popping through watery colored layers lead us to summer’s end.

Because Ron builds his hearts from lots of others’ scraps, it’s hard to know the provenance of the bits and pieces he uses. His heart brooches are lovely collaborations between other’s scraps and Ron’s magic.

He’s close to making 50,000 of these for his Kids Project that receives all the proceeds from sales.

Did I mention that Ron’s on Instagram now? Be sure to follow him. He’s also teaching at ClayOutWest in late September.

A wealth of colors and effects

Marie Segal tempts us with a sampler of Cernits' colors and effects on PolymerClayDaily.com

California’s Marie Segal whips out all the Cernit metallic, opaline, translucents, and opaque clays to create this simple sampler of dotted domes on Instagram.

Innies, outies, mokume-sliced and Skinner-blended. What’s not to love?

Now if we can only get Marie to label which colors she used! So hard to choose among all the colors and effects.

Floral treatments

Utah’s Jana Roberts Benzon unveiled her most recent series of delicate florals and fans. If you look back at earlier work you can see how she’s refining her fluttery petals.

Jana started out as a floral designer and that love of natural elements and attention to balance and color still influences her creations.

She buries the wires in the clay and on the earrings at the top right, she winds a polymer thread around to cover the join.

Playful leaves

Meisha Barbee plays with leaves and mokume gane on PolymerClayDaily.com

California’s Meisha Barbee has been having some summer fun. You might not recognize these leaves as hers but she’s pushing her boundaries.

Meisha uses mokume gane veins interspersed with textured leaf parts imprinted with the tread on her shoe.

Go back on her Instagram and you’ll see the decorations for her summer glow-in-the-dark party.

Meisha’s having fun! Do you have some fun built into your schedule this week?

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