Polymer Clay Daily

Artists

Viral polymer extrusions

Bettina Welker’s clever extruded cane that was featured last week has gone viral already. Some of the most imaginative versions of Bettina’s tutorial showed up on the blog of tmariefrance (Marie France Tournat).

Marie used Bettina’s multi-colored extruded cane as a launch point for other experiments that you can browse through on her site and shop.

If you’ve never extruded before, this cane can give you instant success. Let me know if you come up with your own interesting versions. I’m going to have to try this too. You can use the off-cuts and leftovers for that other viral tutorial, the Stroppel cane.

Real textures

James real textures

Victoria James‘ texture sheets are a favorite of mine because most of them replicate stone, wood, plants and other real textures. It’s helpful that for most of her designs she shows polymer examples. This one caught my eye. The pattern comes from her shingle cracked growth ring texture sheet.

Victoria explains that, “PearlEx was lightly rubbed on the out-y part of a silicon texture sheet and the clay was impressed. This textures the clay and transfers the mica powder at the same time. Next PearlEx was rubbed directly onto the out-y part of the clay surface. The clay was then rolled flat.” Super easy mokume gane!

Beach finds

It feels as if you could brush warm ancient sand off these polymer treasures from Elena Sevva (here’s the correct link). Elena is from Ukraine and lives in Israel.

She wraps delicate wire around some of the amber-like beads and strings them on a leather cord to complete the effect. Stamped designs and scratches are accented with faux metallic and ceramic finishes. Look at them more closely on her Flickr pages.

Summer travels

I’m fully in vacation mode and PCD posts may reflect that as they appear little later and on a more leisurely schedule. Let’s all have some summer fun.

Mixing clays

If you like your clays in both polymer and metal, take a look at the work of Ohio artist Pat Bolgar. Her complex combinations mix materials, colors and shapes in rich and appealing ways. Her mixes engage the eye as she brings color to metallics and, at the same time, adds metallics to polymer.

Pat is featured in the new Metal Clay and Color book and she’s added updated photos on her Facebook page. You can also tour her cabin-in-the-woods studio on Facebook.

Polymer meets zentangle meets typography

Otrzan pet names

Not only is this design from Croatia’s Nikolina Ortrzan eye-catching, it contains some secrets.

Another artist (Christine Candora-Hickey from North Carolina) showed how she had combined contour lettering and zentangle in her journal in ink and then added color using watercolor. Nikolina used the idea to create a polymer pendant that lists the names of all her pets.

“I just couldn’t resist when I saw this artjournaling post. I wrote the names of all our pets, past and present ones,” she says. Here’s Nikolina’s Etsy page. You may remember her popular cat earring designs.

Mosaic Monday

Cepelikovas mosaics

Pavla Cepelikova’s mosaic hollow beads will have you scratching your head. The colors and design combine to make them light, summery and intriguing.

This Czech polymer artist has a way with mosaics. Last time we featured her she had created her interpretation of a red, white and blue mosaic American flag on a heart brooch.

Pavla’s Facebook page shows how active she’s been in regional guild events.