Polymer Clay Daily

Faux Shisha

These new mirrored beads delight me so I thought I’d share them with you. I’ve always been drawn to Shisha embroidery (you know, those wonderful textiles with mirrors). Seeing how Maria Airoldi applied small nail glitter pieces to her beads gave me big ideas.

All that I learned about working small and intensely in the Cynthia Toops’ class was brought to bear on this project. Thin cane slices were individually applied to a black bead. I felt like I’d hit a new vein of creativity.

The small hexagonal pieces of glitter bake tightly onto the raw clay with no adhesive necessary. Cynthia Toops’ faux heishi beads are cut from thin sheets of baked clay with a paper punch. These beads represent a collaboration of many ideas from artists around the world.

Dayle Doroshow will draw a random number for the book giveaway (see Tuesday’s post) on Friday afternoon. We love all the comments! Thanks.

Texture your trash

Dayle Doroshow’s oversized paper beads (these are each about 1 1/2″ wide) echo exotic, tribal themes.

Dayle admits they’re made from the tail ends of her polymer projects, simple tall triangles rolled onto a fat skewer and then flattened with stamps and textures. Paints and powders and whatever is handy add the final effect.

Since Dayle and I are playing together this week, we’ve decided to giveaway one of our Creative Sparks books signed by both of us. Dayle shares how she developed habits and tricks that tease her back into the studio when she’s stumped or stewing.

Leave us a comment and we’ll dash an autographed book off to the winner on Friday.

Easter Monday

There are a few polymer mushrooms and such in this beaded bracelet by Wendy Malinow. The rabbits are beheaded toys surrounded by seed beads and crystals. It’s a sumptuous seasonal piece that’s irresistable. Here’s a close-up. Wendy grew up in this area of Oregon where such moss and wildlife and dewy sparkling flowers are plentiful in spring.

The polymer patchwork rabbit is from Lisa Pavelka who is just back from Petra Nemravova’s Fimohrani Event in Prague. Lisa’s rabbit is covered with mokume gane cane ends.

It feels like spring and I wasn’t quite ready to give up the holiday so let’s have another day of celebration.

Egg Hunt

Carol Simmons has been hunting for the best technique for covering eggs with veneers of polymer cane slices.

Now that she’s perfected her system and created a machine that will cut consistently thin slices, she’s pondering applying cane slices to other shapes and items.

Read about her pattern-choosing, color-selecting method here. Here’s an earlier PCD post with more information. Have a Happy Easter!

Sweet polymer

Beware, Afi Tajvidi’s polymer characters are sweeter than Easter candy and just as addictive. This Toronto artist has a delicate voice and a soft touch completely in sync with her palette and her stories. Check out Hippopo shown here or the romantic Igie and JellyBelly.

Her dainty, fine characters are sometimes available on her Etsy Joojooland shop where she also sells her illustrations and jewelry. They’re nicely grouped on Flickr.

Cane, layer, texture, repeat

These polymer pendants from France’s Cathy (dumauvobleu) are intensely caned, collaged and textured. Balancing colors and patterns takes skill and patience. Cathy must have her dot technique down to a rapid fire rat-ta-tat-tat because her Flickr pages are full of patterns riddled with texturing.

In the mood for spring? Take a look.

Vacation Update

Who knew that a 3-hour time change could wreak such sleeping/waking havoc? Surely I’ll feel awake tomorrow!

Micromosaics and metal clay

Just in time for Easter, Cindy Silas finished her micromosaic from our recent class with Cynthia Toops. Cindy’s leaping bunny is set in a metal clay bezel that she textured with photopolymer plates.

Here’s the in-progress shot in case you missed it. Baked, splinter-sized pieces of rolled polymer are set into unbaked clay, a tedious but meditative process.

I’m leaping to the west coast today for a vacation. If you see beach pebbles and sea glass creeping into PCDaily posts, you’ll know why.

Speechless polymer

Claire Wallis invites the wearers of her polymer brooch to fill in the empty bubble and make their own statement with her quote brooch. “Grab a pen and express yourself,” she says.

Her matching earrings whisper sweet nothings.

We last looked at this UK artist’s faux knitting. “My work generally leans towards simple colours and sculptural shapes and with the exception of striped, stacked canes I hadn’t tried anything more adventurous. This was my first attempt at a ‘proper’ cane,” says Claire.

What would you like to say to yourself this week?

Giving polymer life

Dayton’s Anita Behnan packs her 1″ polymer bugs full of smiles. Putting personality into a small lump of clay is quite an art. She knows how to give her creatures endearing expressions as she surrounds them with little caned flowers.

At this point in the season, all the bugs in the garden look as harmless as these. She sent along this very sweet rabbit as well. You’ll have to check Facebook to see more of Anita’s work.

Applying metallics

Maria Airoldi from Bergamo, Italy transforms bullseye polymer extrusions into fascinating African textiles by applying some sort of tiny metallic dots to the surface. They look like sequins but the same thing could be achieved with a metallic paint pen. You can see how Maria enlivens ho-hum beads with a dash of sparkle as you check out her Flickr pages

After seeing the twinkling mirrored mosaic magic in Philadelphia, I’m on the prowl for ways to incorporate sparkle into my work. Whole new worlds open when you take a stimulating class, don’t they?