Chinese vases

Beefball Papa seems an unlikely name for a polymer artist from Bejing. It could be a bad translation.

There are few other clues to guide us and we will have to let this Chinese artist’s Flickr photos speak for themselves. You can see how he has moved from creating small vessels to larger items over the last year.

His latest mokume gane striped vases are particularly interesting.

The extruded strings make his vase resemble the colorfully melted candles that were popular in the 60s. Heidi McCullough sent the link to PCD. Let us know if you find more information.

Polymer confessions

This post is late because I’m vacationing out west. I confess!

These couple of frames are from the newest Facebook video from Georg Dinkel. He again addresses our religious and technological lapses in a piece appropriately called The Sinner. It shows a blogger flogging herself with her laptop (that’s my interpretation).

If you can’t access the video, take a browse through his website to experience his remix of architecture and religion in polymer. I’ll be a better person tomorrow!

Stockpiling polymer gems

Texas’ Randee Ketzel provides us with this weekend’s pile of bling.

She’s stockpiling her imitation opal cabs for sale at the upcoming IPCA retreat in Ohio. She’ll be working with these babies and demoing how to set them in bronze bezels (plus teaching a pre-retreat class).

Can’t come? Take a look at Randee’s recent book, Polymer Clay Gemstones: The Art of Deception, that provides 20 projects on how to make your own ancient artefacts.

Learn more about Randee on Etsy and Facebook.

Romantic polymer

In Sonya Gallardo’s latest collection called Loverboy/s she reflects on romantic love. You may never have seen polymer look quite so sexy and fashionable as it does in her video. “Each piece in this project consists of a pairing of two parts and what they represent reflects some of my ideals on what love is,” she explains.

This LA artist’s Golden Ardor necklace was created for the trendy Of a Kind online artisan fashion store. Sonya and Of a Kind are part of the current issue of American Craft magazine which focuses on artist-made fashion and wearables. Her work (like this two-part Amity necklace) is also sold at the Cooper Hewitt Museum shop.

When she dropped out of art school and moved into her brother’s old room, she asked herself, “What can I make that’s small enough to fit on this table?” A blogged photo of her work went viral and her aesthetic caught on. HighLow Jewelry was founded in 2011. Read her bio here (it contains some great stories).

Polymer fish out of water

Melissa Terlizzi’s Like a Fish Out of Water picked up an award at the Art Works gallery in Richmond, VA even though Melissa says she feels like all her polymer nature scenes look like fish out of water when they’re shown with other traditional art.

She gravitates to bugs and tide pools, shells and sea life. This cane is the result of her taking a long look at turtles, a hard job for someone who admits she can’t sit still.

Melissa has created a following for her Clay and Cabernet nights at a local gallery on warm summer evenings. You’ll find her on Facebook and Flickr.

More autumn creatures

This slightly stunned group of CandleWycke sculptures sprouted in Dawn Schiller’s Chula Vista, CA class last weekend. They fit nicely with yesterday’s woodland find. In a second workshop Dawn taught her famous PocketFae sculpt. Wouldn’t that have been fun?

Oh well, you can glean how-to’s from her book and stroll through her world of Odd Fae on her blog and her Facebook page. This week Dawn is part of a panel of experts presenting on the Rise of the Artist Entepreneur at Comic-Con in San Diego.

Polymer shrooms

Jana Roberts Benzon recently collected ideas from walks in the woods and hikes in the mountains and turned what she saw into polymer beads.

She used alcohol inks to color these polymer versions of the mushrooms she found. See the bark and berries that she grouped with other components into a dramatic Woodland Gathering neckpiece.

“I’m having so much fun creating things from nature and close to my heart,” Jana says. These photos appeared on Jana’s Facebook page where she also unveiled a prototype of new some new work like the spiraled piece at the right that she may be teaching soon.

Small pleasures

There’s something appealing and comforting about small ideas. India’s Shirali Patel specializes in polymer paper clips, magnets, push pins, flash drives and other little delights. She calls her business just what it is – Small Ideas. Her visual jokes and mementos are what Shirali describes as, “Whimsical craft with purpose.”

She flattens favorite sports figures into Splatta Coast’z or brightens house plants with funny garden stakes. She cooks up your favorite Indian food – in miniature. This meal also serves as a computer flash drive.

Shirali was trained as a biochemist, worked in fashion design and landed in her polymer studio where she’s worked 10 to 12 hours a day since 2011. You can tour her immaculate studio on her Facebook page. Here’s her site, her Flickr page, and her Pinterest presence. Have some small pleasures this weekend.

Autumn impulses

Slovenia’s Klavdija Kurent already feels fall in the air. She has a head full of new ideas and a studio full of supplies. She rummaged around in her boxes of unfinished pieces and cane remnants to create these two new pieces.

For the links she tried a new version of her liquid Kato Go with the Flow technique. Then she made use of favorite cane pattern leftovers for a new series of urban tribal necklaces.

See more of her creations for autumn on Flickr, Pinterest and Facebook. Do you get inspired when the seasons change? What is calling to you this fall?

Finding Klick

With a name like “Klick” it would take time to sniff out this French artist’s identity (and I want to get to my studio) so I’ll leave it to you to share her proper name with us.

Her necklace turned up on FB and caught my eye. Are we color-depleted? It felt like we could use another dose and there it was. Her photo gallery is full of more great color combos.

Klick says she used Dan Cormier’s templates to make the smooth oval shapes. Each bead is a mokume gane painting. Her work pops with energy and I’d love to share non-FB links if you can find them.

Sarah Simpson Connor pointed out that Klick’s name is clearly Caroline Cornic-Isola.

‹ 1 … 174 175 176 … 403 ›