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.

Ombre orange

A shot of orange might brighten your day! This dose of color is from Russia’s Maria Belkomor.

She punches out circles of polymer from a thin sheet of Skinner blended color and stacks the baked heishe-like disks into a beautiful ombre strand. Have you calculated how many she needed to cut out for these bracelets? Time consuming? Yes. Beautiful? Yah!

In a recent post Maria explains how she designed a similar necklace in a cockatoo palette – from sketch to stringing.

Her colors sing and she has unending patience for repeating patterns. The best overview of her work is on Pinterest and you can see even more on Flickr.

Striped surprises

Neat and tidy stripes from Israel’s Vicka Bahana start the week. She leaves a segment of contrasting base bead peeking out from under the striped cane slices.

With just that slight surprise, an otherwise plain bead gets a whole new outlook.

Her Bengal bracelet gains a sophisticated touch from the curved corner beads with their shiny end caps.

Vicka sells her work on Etsy and Marmelada. You can find her on Facebook too.

Could your work benefit from a slight change or a hint of surprise?

Urban chic polymer

Geometric, minimalist, modern, distressed, urban – some of the adjectives you might use to describe the polymer jewelry of Israel’s Danna Gusman pictured wearing her work here.

The integral use of chains, the scratched and dirty textures make a chic, fashionable statement.

You can find more work like this Squares Modern necklace and Gray and Black Mandala on Danna’s Facebook and Pinterest sites as well as her Etsy site. Genevieve Williamson sent in this link and you can see that she shares an aesthetic with Danna.

Two-headed polymer

Canada’s Helen Breil can fold, fan, shape and stamp polymer like a champ. Her two ebooks explain how to make beautiful undulating shapes and she’ll be demoing her methods at the IPCA Retreat in Columbus. Helen knows her geometry and is able to fold simple flat cutouts into surprisingly elegant forms.

Collaborating with Annie Pennington for this piece gives Helen’s folded designs an even richer and more complex dimension. Annie, an Associate Editor at Art Jewelry magazine, works in felt and metal along with polymer. Her brooches were IPCA Award winners this year.

Helen sent Annie the blue overlapping folded forms. Annie added the copper setting, the felt center and the round accents proving again that two heads are better than one.

Weathered facets

These Weathered Polymer Bicones from Germany’s Margit Bohmer are faceted then colored in a way that makes them look like stained glass.

The colored facets are a new twist in Margit’s signature rainbow palette. She’s also added the weathering that she learned in a Staci Louise tutorial.

More and more we see techniques mutating across boundaries. You can be proud to be part of such a sharing community.

Here’s Margit’s Etsy shop.

Cracking the code

This very large hollow crackle pendant with a carved edge from Canada’s Claire Maunsell bursts with color, texture and excitement. Claire teaches the first class at the new Galerie Freisleben in Ubersee in August.

She says, ” I think you’ll agree that we can expect this gallery to be an exciting hub for all things polymer now and in the future, and I’m just so excited to be part of it!”

Claire is teaching surfaces in Ubersee and traveling to other venues to share her own brand of hollow forms. Claire comes from a background in hot glass so her approach to surfaces and hollow forms in polymer is quite different from others.

I’m returning to Ohio from Canada today with a renewed appreciation for the mellow Canadian vibe. My 3-year-old grandson is floating on a cloud after a visit to the top of the CN Tower in Toronto. Who knew that tickets to a tourist attraction and a ride in a glass elevator could bring such happiness? Ah, the joys of grandparenting.

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