Neat and tidy stripes from Israel’s Vicka Bahana start the week. She leaves a segment of contrasting base bead peeking out from under the striped cane slices.
With just that slight surprise, an otherwise plain bead gets a whole new outlook.
Her Bengal bracelet gains a sophisticated touch from the curved corner beads with their shiny end caps.
One look at Christina Cassidy’s profile photos on Facebook and you’ll understand why she draws horses so beautifully on polymer clay. She’s grown up with animals and is surrounded by them.
Though she no longer has horses, she owned and worked with them for many years and they remain her muse and the subject of most of her polymer art on Etsy.
Her etherial fine-lined ink drawings are modern Lascaux Cave paintings that capture the essence of the animals. “I love drawing small and drawing on polymer clay is wonderful, it’s so forgiving and inspiring,” she says.
This 1 7/8″ x 1 1/2″ Copper Paint Horse Trotting pin has a white polymer base. Chris drew on the baked form with India and copper inks adding light green and blue inks for the background. She seals her works with a protective finish. Here’s where we first discovered her.
My eyes skitter over the pictures online as I emerge from my vacation fog. I don’t know when I’ll catch up and settle into a routine.
The photos that broke through the fog today are very small delights. Eriko Page’s beads are sweet and succulent. This California artist was trained in Japan and you can feel the influence.
Instead of carefully covering a base bead and hiding it under cane slices, she arranges luscious petals around a solid color bud, making her beads look like exploding blossoms in a polymer garden.
Eriko’s sleight of hand gives the beads a distinctive look that you can enjoy here. Here’s an interview with her from FireMountainGems that tells you more.
Ohio’s Kimberly Arden was surprised when a gallery gobbled up all she had of her new summer design. We aren’t surprised. Kim’s design draws you in as she layers bullseye slices and leaf shapes over a scrap stripe background.
Some of the bullseyes and leaves are translucent which adds to the dense underwater garden illusion.The summer colors make this a design to dive into.
The overlapping circles on this pin and pendant by Spain’s Ana Belchi are a mystery, a color illusion which she teaches in a workshop that you can read about here.
You can see photo setups she’s considering, polymer canes she’s thought about, jewelry that appeals to her. Her sense of style is so authentic, so “her” that it makes me sigh with pleasure.
Sure, Betsy has a website and other online presences and shops, but with Pinterest she gives us more insight into how she thinks.
The painterly pendant is called Landscape 2 and it’s from her etched veneer series with extruded strings pressed in which she explains on Facebook. The earrings look like salvaged circles from an abstract canvas and they’re from an earlier version of her etched color series. Betsy sells a good tutorial about her methods but not about this etched color process yet.
These beads from Indiana’s Beth Ann Hoover will reflect your mood. She offers a whole series of Miragepolymer beads that include heat sensitive liquid crystals that change color.
How does Beth Ann do this? Does she add ink? Film? Paint? What’s your guess? Will she divulge her secret? Looking at these beads may put you in a curious mood (that’s yellow). Here she is on Facebook and Pinterest. What mood have you chosen for this week?
Correction:Thanks to all who quickly noted that these are manufactured hollow polymer beads that Beth Ann is distributing. My bad, I misunderstood and I rarely venture to wholesale bead sites. Problem is I’m still intrigued as to how this is done. So the question remains. Color my mood “red” with embarrassment.
When she started experimenting with translucent polymer, her work took a turn to amber and imitative glass. She’s come up with some innovative methods and clever solutions for making hollow beads and she’s not done playing yet.
If translucent beads have been calling you, take a look at her tutorials. I bought one tutorial to test and now I want to know all her tricks. Headpins? Disks? Bumpy beads? She continues to turn out tutorials. Here’s her Etsy shop and her Facebook page.
Hope you didn’t have other plans for the weekend because you may be distracted.
Galina Grebennikova’s extruded beads show a positively brilliant modification of devices. She uses icing tips to get the effects she wants. Look at what she does with this ruffle tip.
Galina’s discovery got me wondering about what other clever ideas and shapes are out there.
Snap a picture of your item that used my extruder patterns or some combination you came up with on your own and enter the Spring Push contest. The art must consist of mostly extruded polymer. Pretty easy, eh?
Attach your photo to an email and send it in. The deadline is April 16 with winners announced April 18. Is there a pattern you’ve been missing? Let me know and we’ll try to include it in our next set.
The top winner will win a $50 gift certificate from Global Studio Tools. Second prize is a copy of the book, Polymer Clay Global Perspectives and third prize is Protect Your Memories sealant. Winners will be featured on PCDaily and pictured in our next ad in The Polymer Arts magazine. Strut your stuff! Email your entry.
