Polymer Clay Daily

Tips and Tricks

Polymer faux wire

Helen Breil’s free String Bead tutorial may keep you busy this weekend. This necklace is dusted with mica powders, sealed with spray and filled with pearls.

Helen extrudes the strings and forms them into faux wire that can be shaped (and reshaped) into slinky cages into which you can tuck other beads.

In most places it’s still warm enough to extrude with ease over the end-of-summer holiday. On her website she offers a slideshow that guides you through the process that you can tailor to create your own designs.

Thanks to Helen for providing our entertainment. And check out her texture stamps too.

Folded polymer

Winnie Poh comes to us from Moscow (I think). These clever folded beads are cutout and stamped stars whose points are folded up on themselves.

Her site is chock full of ideas that are well executed with a very Russian feel. Hair ornaments and smoothly finished hollow pendants are mixed with video game and cartoon figures.

Let’s hope there’s a Russian translator among you who can fill in the blanks about this young artist.

Swirling inks from Greece

These sorbet colored lentil swirls from Athens’ Klio Tsaliki are the result of lots of experiments with Premo frost, Premo white, alcohol markers and regular markers.

The sweet pale colors are perfect for summer. For other seasons, see what Klio has done using Premo gold.

Watching the swirls of pattern materialize is addictive. If you’re looking for an easy and fun diversion in clay, this might just what you need.

If you’ve never made a bicone-shaped bead, you’re in for a treat. Desiree McCrory’s step-by-step is one of the best explanations. It’s like riding a bike and once you get it, you’ll take off.

Twisted polymer fun

All signs point to extruding. Get out your gun and try this new trick from St. Petersburg’s Maria Belkomor .

Her twisted bracelet comes with an easy tutorial in Russian but you won’t need written instructions to get the gist of it. The pictures show you everything.

Notice how the soothing colors of her bracelet match the colors in the street view on her blog.

Some fun for your weekend! It’s still hot which will make the clay softer and easier to extrude.

Working Wednesday

Israel’s Yonat Dascalu brings us these sunny canes that look like crisp sun dress fabrics. What an inspiration it is to examine neat colorful canes that work. See more on her Flickr and Etsy sites.

If you’ve been eyeing the latest dyes and patinas from Swellegant, look at Heather Powers’ examples,  color formulas and step-by-step how-tos for this new line. The effects are stunning and require some patience and persistence. Heather is sold on the product and her instructions may help if you’re considering them.

Careful, Heather’s sites are full of new beads and pretty things that may keep you online longer than you intended.

Clearly a polymer mystery

We start the week with a head-scratcher from Katrin Neumaier. How does she form her glass-like Firefly earrings? In the comments (in German) on her Flickr page she reveals that liquid Fimo is involved. She certainly starts our week with a mystery.

You may recall that we featured Katrin’s glass-like earrings on PCD back in February. The early ones were made using Pardo translucent polymer clay. Obviously, she wasn’t satisfied and kept experimenting to achieve an even clearer form.

I see some teaching in Katrin’s future, don’t you?

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!