Appliqued stories

When PCD first featured Eva Soehjar back in 2008, she mostly painted on polymer. Now she applies minuscule pieces of polymer to create illustrations on the surface of her pendants.

She tells stories, like this Red Riding Hood, by applying small clay shapes with a sharp needle onto solid colored clay bases.

“I want to make people happy when they see my jewelry,” she says. It’s hard not to smile when you look at her delicate appliqued illustrations and her softly colored florals. Visit her work on Etsy and Flickr and have a happy weekend.

Thinking inside the box

Sometimes it’s good think inside the box as in Dawn Schiller’s latest polymer OddFae tucked in a 1″ locket. Guru in a box? Consultant in a box?

Dawn cautions, “For the record — If anyone EVER hears me say, Gosh, I’m bored! I think I’ll sculpt a little, tiny, less-than-an-inch-tall oddfae into a copper box! Feel free to whop me upside the head ’til I drop the sculpting tool.”

Check out more of her work in the June issue of PolymerCafe magazine. Her Faemaker book is due out this August. Read about her latest exploits on FaceBook and Etsy.

Polymer chips and tubes

Last time we checked in on Elena Samsonova she was playing with salt and pepper. Now she’s into chips…as in this necklace made from 300 thin polymer chips imprinted with French postage stamp transfers.

Let’s applaud her tenacity. Her story (Moscow to Brooklyn, child psychologist to artist) and her website are full of twists and treats.

My late-night cruise through your websites also netted these story beads from Erin Prais-Hintz. She encircles a tube bead with a familiar saying, favorite lyrics, names or dates stamped into polymer.

Erin incorporates these message beads into wistful Simple Truth pendants, endearing wearable reminders. Erin is part of this month’s Storybook project over at the Vintag blog where they’ll be featuring an interview with her and offering giveaways of some of her pendants.

Surreal Tuesday

Serbian artists Milena Babic and Miloš Samardžic teamed up to share their cubist-like vision in polymer in pieces like this Face Up brooch.

Their Tramps and Glams are their interpretation of silent film stars, charming tramps and other surreal characters. You can see the pictures that inspire them on their blog and some additional pictures on Flickr.

Though the duo has been collaborating since 2008, it looks like they’ve just jumped into the digital pool (FB and Twitter) where you’ll want to watch them. Thanks to Alice Stroppel for the link.

Polymer connections

Susan Waddington of Polydogz does many things well. What I found myself stuck on as I cruised through her galleries was her ingenious bails for pendants, some from years past, some new.

Integrating polymer bails into pendant design is quite a trick and Susan’s mastered it. She’s fond of using a paper-bead type construction which she camoflages with decorative coverings as in the shield shape with textured folded circle shown here. Layers of patterns form connections that fit seamlessly into her collages of polymer pattern.

You can see more examples on a sister site here and on Etsy here.

Abstract polymer from Kathleen Dustin

How lovely to end the week with Kathleen Dustin’s Layered Fragment brooch. Kathleen explains, almost apologizes, that her focus is changing from narrative and representational to abstract.

“It seems to me that truly abstract work probably most reflects our humanness because it is based on spirit and what we do not see or know. Narrative or representational work is based on what we see and know. It has been a true challenge for me to make work not based on what I see or know,” she says.

Though her focus may change, her reliance on ways of translucent layering that she developed remains. Breath-taking washes of color pull you in as scribbles of metal float in and out of the frame. This new direction forces other changes and she asks for your suggestions here.

Polymer with magnets

Niche Award winner Melanie West enjoys the challenge of a new design and she’s engineered some clever solutions with her new polymer Ball and Star necklace shown here. A magnet secures the ball next to the star and acts as a clasp on this piece which is strung on buna cord (and check out what looks like buna rings over the cording).

She tried a similar solution using memory wire and found it too bouncy in her test drives. Melanie shares more of her design process along with some of her successes and failures in this post.

Innie/outie polymer

Massachusetts’ Roberta Warshaw creates her designs from a number of small stamps in a collection that she shows off here. Lately she’s inverted those assembled designs, creating an even more interesting effect as shown on the Faux Verdigris pendant here.

“I actually like the way they look better than the original impressed stampings. they have so much more depth this way. They feel much more like a small painting to me,” she says. See them all here and here.

When you don’t know which end is up, try making an “innie” an “outie.”

Bobble head polymer

Texas’ Lisa Renner finds her seeds of inspiration in pods. This mixed media artist will be teaching a polymer pod head doll class in July at the Austin All Dolls Are Art conference. It’s based on an article she wrote for the Autumn 2011 Art Doll Quarterly magazine.

A second class will feature these polymer bobble head dolls with abstract pillow bead bodies. They bob and weave on their wire supports.

The Bird Peeps are from another mixed media class. Check out her galleries to see all the textures and artforms she mixes into what she calls her visual poetry.

Energy like bubbles

A little texture, a little mokume gane, some shape and a whole lot of spring color make these pendants by Warren and Robbin Moeller-Smith into a bunch of fun. There’s more on Flickr.

Their textured bronze bails fold over the top edges to create perfect companions for polymer pendants. These artists/sailors create on a floating studio in the South Pacific.

In the tagline for their Artistic Energy series of pendants they ask, “Where does it come from? Like bubbles on the sea –sometimes there, sometimes not.” Where will your artistic energy come from this week?

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