Italy’s Cecilia Leonini plays an optical trick as she tinkers with the illusions created by painter Victor Vasarely. Could she create a 2D piece with a 3D effect by using color and hand cut lines?
What you may think are beads at the left are quite flat pieces of polymer colored and grooved to fool the eye.
Cecilia’s teaser may give your brain a Monday stretch. Follow her tricks on Flickr, Etsy and Facebook.
Sometimes it’s good to get nervous about trades among friends and, guess what, we all do it. That mixture of fear and competition can motivate us to try harder.
Even longtime artist and Sculpey brand ambassador Syndee Holt admits that this was her second attempt at making little 2 1/2″ diameter polymer bowls for an upcoming swap. She wanted to get her new design just right so she scrapped the first batch and kept going until she felt comfortable. Let the guessing begin about how she achieved this multi-color stone-like effect.
In the September/October issue of Polymer Cafe magazine, Kim Arden reveals how she creates her summer flower pendants. Along with a profile written by Trina Williams, Kim includes a complete tutorial.
She shows how to stack bright and translucent cane slices over a scrap background to build pendants that have color, depth and attitude. Here’s PCD’s first look at Kim’s design from last year.
Read more about Kim on Facebook and her site. See what Syndee’s experimenting with on her blog and on the Sculpey site.
Heather Millican (Swoondimples) beams and shows her dimples as she explains her methods in a free tell-all video tutorial on YouTube.
Heather reveals where she found the perfect brushes (makeup ones from Target), the best glue and wax, her choice for transfer paper and stamps. She leaves nothing out.
The polymer charms and pendants sell briskly on Heather’s Etsy shop not only because of the techniques that she’s developed but also because she brings gentle words and an openess to her pieces which make what she creates all the more irresistable.
You can see more of her on Facebook and Pinterest. You may end up like me saying, “I’ll have what she’s having.”
Tanya Mayorova brings her own mokume gane colors and patterns to Helen Breil’s smart bead design. Ovals of polymer patterns fold over to become graceful beads. Helen offers a free tutorial that gets you started.
Tanya’s results blend into a five-strand boho gypsy necklace that’s assembled to reflect her own aesthetic. Here’s her work in a different color way and single strand design.
These glowing hollow beads from Claire Maunsell are patterned with collaged pieces of laser transfers. The elegant mix of patterns shine through dark and distressed surfaces. The combination lends her beads an aura of a rich and mysterious past.
Claire’s added a number of collaged and hollow beads on her Flickr pages. Go there for your first-of-the-week jolt of inspiration.
We happened to be working on laser transfers in our weekend class in Minnesota. See how Maureen Carlson turned the transfer of her sprite into a sculpture and see some of our class pictures on Instagram.
Pennsylvania’s Beth Petricoin loves polymer and upcycling. A favorite shirt ruined by bleach spots could have been discarded or demoted but Beth couldn’t let that happen. She decided to hide the problem with a radiating design in polymer.
She fabricated the components from thin pieces of polymer cut out and applied with Sculpey Bake and Bond. “I worked in segments of about 6″ by 8″, curing in between segments to keep the areas for curing totally flat in the oven,” says Beth.
She details her project step-by-step in a blog post. She even laundered the shirt after finishing to test the glue’s strength and gives it a definite thumbs up.
“I can hardly wait to jazz up another piece of clothing! I can also see this idea put into use to cover up unwanted holes in clothing….lots of ideas running around in my head,” she admits.
Follow other of Beth’s polymer experiments on Flickr, Etsy, Pinterest and her blog. What’s in your closet begging for an upcycle?
Since you may have some playtime this weekend, I’ll leave you with the UK’s Jon Burgess. His sites are mecca for those who like abstract, geometric, random, organic or fractal-based patterns.
Jon’s been a longtime writer, illustrator and designer. “I have been exploring the backwaters of the various bits of software I use for many years now but have only recently found practical outlets for the designs I produce,” he explains.
Of course polymer is one of the practical outlets he hit upon. His tiles, coasters and beads often contain his image transfers whose hard digital lines have been softened with elegant, distressed edges and thin washes of ink.
Sure, the 1-2-3 polymer transfer steps he shows are straightforward. When he gets to step 12, the fun begins. From this almost-a-tutorial you get the idea of how he batters his pieces to inject them with history and intrigue.
Start on his Pinterest site to understand his aesthetic. Try Tumblr, his blog, Flickr, Etsy and Facebook. Then luxuriate in the patterns.
Perhaps we should call the first posts of the week Matchy Mondays because it’s on Monday that I’m most drawn to polymer works that coordinate with PCD’s colors.
Consider these beautifully graduated and sharply creased beads from the Czech Republic’s Dana Phamova. She plays with the light and shadow caused by the bent surfaces. Here’s another of her light/shadow experiments.
Her beautiful Skinner-blended colors are accented by a few judiciously placed light colored dots. A close look shows that the texture is created with hand-applied pin pricks. She shows a work-in-process shot here.
Dana calls this series Dreaming Cucarachas. Cockroaches? That title breaks the zen mood, doesn’t it? You can catch the vibe again (lots of polymer scratching and distressing) on Facebook and Pinterest.
If you’ve been around polymer for a while you may, like me, think you’ve seen every cane possible. But then a cane brain like Meg Newberg shows her newest ways to make an imitative indigo dye cane and you shake your head in wonder. That soft-edged tie-dye look is challenging in polymer.
Her monthly cane subscription is one of the best deals out there. Each month she emails subscribers cane tutorials that baffle and delight.
I’m off to the studio to try this. Here’s a sampling of my first efforts. It took me several tries to get the hang of it.
You can sign up with Meg or buy back issues on her Etsy site and follow her on Facebook.
Pittsburgh’s Rebecca Watkins was inspired by a friend’s Spring in the Smokies photograph. Armed with new color skills from a Carol Simmons’ class, Rebecca mixed matching hues in polymer.
She carved and colored the beads in her signature style and accented them by brushing liquid black polymer into the lines and hollows. Her work-in-progress shots show how well Rebecca learned her color lessons.
She plans to wear her creation on an eggplant colored t-shirt with a black skirt. See more of Rebecca’s beads on Etsy.
If you’re itching to mix and match your own colors, browse through Carol Simmons’ Pinterest color boards (she has 12 of them). It’s overflowing with mouthwatering palettes that she’s unearthed and sorted.
