The UK’s Claire Wallis builds a cane pattern, backs it with white and shapes it into an imitation cone shell. A bit of weathering with paint and sand paper completes the effect.
Claire loves to simulate nature. PCD has featured her water cane, her faux agate, her polymer knitting and now shells.
Mother Nature must be flattered with all Claire’s imitations.
Moscow’s Juliya Laukhina refines her carving with this newest batch of beads on Instagram. Long nicks of clay dramatically reveal contrasting layers underneath in an almost net-like pattern.
On Etsy, you can see her trying other shapes and sizes as well.
Cuticle cutters are great for carving raw polymer. Could that be what she’s using? I’m adding one more must-try to my studio list. Yours too?
Just as I was admiring the speckled heishi beads in yesterday’s post, Croatia’s Nikolina Otrzan unveiled her new terrazzo cane tutorial for what she calls a Pixie Cane.
Artists from Pier Voulkas to Angela Bahrenholtz to Alice Stroppel and others have come up with methods of making multicolor terrazzos.
Nikolina’s variation is tighter, neater, more intense. I ran to my studio to see if I could do it. My first effort was satisfying even though I was working with too-soft clay. These blocks will make great veneers. Nik is planning another tutorial that will cover projects made using the patterns.
Caners will be pleased to achieve a random pixelated look that goes beyond a surface effect. Yesterday’s spattered beads from Marina Rios were created with what I’m guessing were low-fire enamel powders. You know how it is when you hit upon a method that’s right up your alley? I couldn’t contain my enthusiasm.
Chicago’s Marina Rios (fanciful devices) made some very cool heishi beads by covering faceted tubes of polymer with acrylics and enamel paints.
“At all hours I find myself crouched over tiny, crusty treasures found in my home country of Uruguay, or in midwestern flea markets, or culled from the brilliant artisans of Etsy” says Marina, “I am madly in love with crafting, altering, assembling little bits of wearable art.”
Look at more of Marina’s rustic, tribal, mixed media assemblages on Instagram.
These beads have already sold on Etsy so we’ll have to make our own versions. I plan to make facets on long extruded tubes, then color them and chunk them up.
Sometimes simple ideas grab me and won’t let go so I post them on PCD as a way to remind myself to try them.
Angela Fernihough of the UK’s Monjoo continues our look at what she calls, lovably ugly pet monsters. Each of the polymer pocket pets has a story.
When Angela decided to take her monsters on the road she raised the funds for display stands and signage through a modest and successful Kickstarter campaign. Have you considered a funding campaign to reach your goals?
A few days in the studio with grandchildren has heightened my appreciation for lovably ugly creatures like Angela’s.
Each year our red, white and blue canes are provided by another country! Aren’t you proud of that?
Thanks to Israel and Shuli Raanan for these stars and stripes canes. Her Etsy site is full of flags and tidy swirl beads topped with stars in unusual ways.
If you’ve ever made a bicone bead that swirls as hers do, you’ll appreciate her precision. It still looks like magic when Shuli does it so well. You can find her work on Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter.
Visiting grandchildren will be distracting me for the next few days so PCD posts will be intermittent or missing altogether this week. Have a great holiday!
This brooch is part of a new line from Spain’s Natalia Garcia de Leaniz. It’s slinky and wormy and makes you want to smile and run your fingers across the crenulated Skinner-blend surface.
Can’t you imagine bending the snakes into other shapes or making them into tube beads?
Natalia and Dani often come up with head-scratching shapes. What could she have used to make this one? We’ll have to watch (Flickr and Facebook) to learn more.
Are there fireflies in your yard this summer? Melissa Terlizzi offers a great class in making your own lightning bugs for beginners to experts with her CraftArtEdu online class. Here’s the rundown of CraftArtEdu’s newest classes.
Melissa turns a simple cane, wire for legs and an LED light into a delightful summer project that becomes a cute zipper pull or decoration.
She loves to reinterpret nature’s creatures in polymer as you will see on Facebook and Flickr. Here’s a good project to engage the nature lovers in your life.
Can there be anemones and tide pools near Dana Phamova’s (fruitensse) in Czech Republic? Must be! How else could she reproduce them in glowing translucent polymer colors so well? Her photo of a pile of these beads on Instagram will make you want to dive in.
Dana will teach these twisty beads during Lucy Clay Academy Polymer Week in July. “We will explore transparency and flexibility of polymer clay and I will show you how create Anemone jewelry,” she says. Here she is on Flickr and Facebook.
Look closely and you’ll see that the flowers on Marji Purcell’s 2″ tall potted plants are actually stoppers for Bottles of Hope.
These recycled glass medicine vials are covered with polymer and filled with good wishes and hope for health. They are distributed to cancer patients.
Cancer survivor and polymer artist Diane Gregoire began the project in 1999 in Rhode Island. The concept has spread internationally and many guilds and organizations contribute their time and art to this project.
Competition for cool BOH designs like Marji’s makes this a popular guild project. It gives you a great reason to clay with friends, learn a few tricks and spread hope at the same time.
