Polymer Clay Daily

Artists

Polymer flutters and surveys

Do these transparent polymer butterflies from Claire Maunsell make your heart flutter? The thin colorful beads are built on a 20 ga. copper wire which can be bent into a custom attachment. The customer asked for an assortment of colors and Claire happily obliged.

If these look like glass, it’s because Claire brings 20 years of experience in hot glass to polymer and her work contains echoes of her earlier training.

Check her Etsy and Zibbet sites to see when these lovely creatures begin appearing there (not yet).

More about you

The first of the surveys for our Synergy3 presentation poses just a few short questions about how you came to work in polymer and what pleasures and frustrations the craft brings you. Your answers will help Judy Belcher and me construct a more accurate picture of our community.

The multiple choice format makes it easy and you can answer in English, French, Spanish, German or Czech thanks to our volunteer translators. Click here to start.

Putting the pieces together

Each of these 25 polymer squares was made by different artists following a pattern handed to them. Julie Eakes prepared the Picasso drawing puzzle and the Pingree group created the pieces in 2011.

The rules were to reproduce the image you were given and to use a limited palette. No one knew what the whole project would look like. Assembling the tiles into an image was a struggle and a good group project.

Synergy puzzle

Judy Belcher and I are trying to assemble a picture of the polymer world for the Synergy conference. When you fill out the first of our surveys on Monday, you’ll be adding your anonymous data to our puzzle. Be ready, pop quiz on Monday. With your help, we’ll begin to see a picture emerging.

Wednesday class

I’m also assembling the last bits for my Rolling Stones class on Wednesday which will include some faux sea glass tips. Join me online at Craftcast for a fun session.

Fairy tale polymer

Julie Eakes has returned to her fairy tale canes, taking slices from her Beauty and the Beast and Red Riding Hood canes and making them into cylindrical pendants with polymer end caps.

Tiles with reminders about the stories hang from the bottom of each bead saying, “Beauty comes from within”,”Sweetest tongue has sharpest tooth” and “Wolves lurk in every guise.”

“I managed to get a cane slice to wrap around completely, working the tree and the bushes together to hide the seam which really looks cool up close,” says Julie.

See these and more of her recent cane portraits and elaborate frames on her site.

Polymer housing

Housing starts are on the rise, at least in the polymer world. Two new ones – Inessa (smfactory) from Kiev with her Halloween houses and Slovenia’s Marjana Cajhen collections of buildings got me house hunting. You may remember a few others featured on PCD:

These nostalgic and stylized designs make popular wearable and decorative reminders of simpler times and places.

Polymer mwah

We end the week with a big juicy kiss from Kathleen Dustin. It’s one of her signature polymer evening bags, of course.

Two of Kathleen’s purses were donated for an exhibit at Amsterdam’s Museum of Bags and Purses and will be part of the museum’s permanent collection.

Technical Note

Did you know that the folks at Sculpey changed the name of Premo Frost to White Translucent? (I had it turned around earlier…oops.) Frost and White Translucent are the same.

Iris Weiss from Polyform clarifies the situation explaining that, “We had to rename the two ounce bars for the larger craft stores because consumers didn’t understand what Frost was.” Thanks to Ronna Sarvas Weltman for bringing the switch to our attention.

Retro bangles

Seth Savarick introduced these new bangles on his Facebook page along with a couple of brooches.

While everyone else is gushing in their comments, Seth remains silent and mysterious about his latest creations. Way to keep us on our toes, Seth. What gives? There’s a cool retro look to these bangles, don’t you agree?

Polymeow

Perhaps a polymer version of lolcats will brighten your mid-week. This feline brooch from TZ is bright and simple and fun. Spiraled extruded strings of clay are cut out in a kitty shape and enhanced with texture. A few dabs of clay form the cheeks and eyes. Add a tongue and whiskers and voila.

TZ shows off other cats on his site. It takes a while to load but it’s worth the wait.

The cat’s away today. You mice play in your studios.

Note: The translation confused me and I originally attributed this incorrectly. There’s much more art and a proper explanation on the artist’s site here.

 

Embellished with extrusions

These beads from Belgium’s Carolina Pazos Michel (malospazos) use extruded canes as embellishments in a fresh way. She adds strips of extruded canes on top of subtle blends. Not satifised with that, she shapes the beads into flat donuts and tops them off with cherry-like rounds in the center.

Her combinations are a riff on Bettina Welker’s retro cane and have a spontaneous vibe that energizes them.