Slovenia’s Roberta Mohar gives a new twist to familiar techniques with her large flattened spiral extrusion beads. Her pumpkin-shaped beads are cleverly formed from three balls of clay that have been folded and joined.
Roberta brings her own sensibilities to otherwise standard methods of bead making. Look closely at her Flickr and Facebook offerings and you’ll see new life breathed into familiar techniques.
Tory Hughes‘ imitative agate beads are part of her spring collection (see collection parts 1 and 2). The Trebizond Treasure Collection includes faux stone along with antique beads, crystal, abalone and more joined together in a sophisticated melange. Her Aquarelles series glows with fresh spring colors.
Tory has been sorting and refining her website as well. Her new navigation makes bouncing between her teaching, gallery and coaching services much easier and brings them comfortably under one roof.
PCDaily has been experiencing some hiccups in the past couple of days. Thanks for your patience. Stay tuned.
Elaborate hats, roses and horses are all part of the tradition at this weekend’s Kentucky Derby race. Ron Lehocky’s polymer heart pins may become part of the tradition too.
The Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft is now among the galleries that carry the pins and the new Women Creative Gallery also sells them. If you’d like to support the project, write Ron with your color preferences and he’ll make a selection for you.
Ron has created and sold over 15,000 hearts with all proceeds going directly to the KIDS Center for Pediatric Therapies. We’ve followed this amazing project for six years and you can read more here.
Ron’s project is a “sure thing.”
Germany’s Eva Soehjar’s polymer embroidered earrings bring a breath of spring to begin your May.
White pear shaped bases are appliqued with dainty flowers made of tiny pieces of clay which are layed on and shaped with a needle tool. Eva treats the polymer beads as canvases for painting on her Etsy site.
We last visited Eva a couple of years ago (here) with two other artists, Jennifer Morris and Italy’s Marina Lombardi who both work in similar techniques. See how all three have progressed.
Thanks to Marian Hertzog for reminding us to take a second look.
Melanie West has revived her appetite for beads. She’s added a hole and modified the shapes of her squid, cicada and cephalopods that usually become bangles.
The new creations retain her unmistakeable undersea aesthetic.
Explaining her “two steps back” approach, Melanine says, “I have found that sometimes going back to a form that comes easy (i.e., simple round balls with holes in them) helps coax out a sleeping muse.”
And speaking of muses, we’ll post the winner of the “Creative Sparks” giveaway here this afternoon.
Joan Israel’s vision of the royal couple may not match those in the news headlines but her 17″ polymer cane slice covered bottles have a very regal air. She’s been on a bottle jag that’s fun to study. My favorite is her scotch bottle.
We looked at Joan’s painting-by-the-slice creations earlier this year and she’s added tons of work to her Flickr site in the meanwhile. I can’t imagine the stash of canes required for this body of work!
Have your royals ready for Friday’s events!
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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.
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.
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.
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!
