Phone to polymer

Colored laser transfers are popping up again on all kinds of shapes. France’s Sonya Girodon transferred some favorite image patterns onto square beads to create these fetching earrings.

Then Australia’s Wendy Jorre de st Jorre (who is a caner at heart) couldn’t resist putting her dogs on her arm using transfers draped over domed oval bases to create a graceful and heartfelt bracelet.

Wendy was following Debbie Crothers’ nicely presented CraftArtEdu tutorial which shows how to shape the beads and add spatters and bits of sparkle.

With all the images we’re accumulating on phones and cameras it’s great to come up with ways to put our photos to use.

See more of Sonya on Pinterest, Flickr and Facebook. Catch Wendy on Facebook, her site, Pinterest and in this interview on Blue Bottle Tree.

Sombre Wednesday

Lina Takhautdinova (Wildhorn) introduces us to the world of dark dressers and stylenoir. Goth meets high fashion in St. Petersburg. Lina pairs upcycled leather, coarse fabric, and aged silver with her own polymer antlers and imitation stones.

She refers to her colors as sombre and you’ll note hashtags that range from avantgarde to postapocalyptic. A short interview on StyleNoir.com gives you a better idea of Lina’s aesthetic and worklife. The best place to see her work is on Instagram and Pinterest. Keep up with her latest news on Facebook.

If you were overwhelmed by the color on Monday and Tuesday’s PCD posts, this should cleanse your palette.

Semi-lenticular polymer

Madrid’s Silvia Ortiz de la Torre combines her Semi-Lenticular creations into a bright bangle. The half-dome is one of Silvia’s favorite forms.

On her Flickr site you can see how she has used this shape to make other jewelry pieces.

For the new creation she covers a half-dome base with precisely positioned thick cane slices. The halves zig and zag against each other to form a round bracelet.

Silvia sticks to a bright color palette in most of her work. The variety comes from changing the shapes, folding and texturing beads to fit together in new ways. She used these three domes as decorative window blind pulls.

See more pictures of the bangle on Facebook. You can also follow her on Etsy and her blog.

Psychedelic Monday

These Greek trees by Arieta Stavrodou are quirky polymer drawings (wall art) that make you wonder what what the vegetation really looks like.

The effect is psychedelic and starts Monday on an energetic note. Do you detect a Hundertwasser influence?

And would you guess that those colors are from pastels or inks? Arieta offers a smattering of work on Pinterest with the rest on Facebook.

Her fish, birds, butterflies and shells hint at an outdoorsy girl who lives close to the water. Let me know if you find more clues about this promising, young artist.

Match and mismatch

This picture from Sylvie Peraud’s sketchbook stirs up feelings of admiration touched with jealousy.

Isn’t this how you meant to work? Draw your idea and then render it in polymer? Yeah, that’s how we mean to work but it doesn’t always work out that way.

Sylvie shows us the results of her careful planning in this earring design. She drew the suspended pod (it began as a pin) and colored it in weeks later.

You’ll be relieved to know that even with this level of intention, Sylvie had to modify the earring to make it hang properly.

She worried about making two matching pieces and (if I’m translating correctly) opted for the second earring to be a post design. She admitted in an earlier blog post about how she spends too much time on Pinterest. (So she’s not too different from the rest of us.)

Enjoy this look over Sylvie’s shoulder and see more of her work on Flickr and Facebook. Learn more from her on CraftArtEdu.

Polymer divas

These Diva Dolls from Barbara McGuire turn into pendants, pins or framed art. What a simple yet evocative use of faces! It’s one of her favorite classes and part of a series she’s teaching in North Carolina in August.

Barbara’s works have a loose and flowing ethereal look. Even her mokume gane stands out as distinctly hers with graceful lines, thin layers, glints of metal leaf and sophisticated colors. She calls hers Intentional Mokume and will be teaching that in August as well.

Barbara worked in polymer industry for years and wrote 10 books so she has an eye for good tools.

She developed her own line including some ingenious measuring designs and hand drawn patterns made into deep rubber stamps which she sells online.

Maybe it’s Barbara’s ease with polymer after years of experience that comes through in her pieces. Go see for yourself on Facebook, Flickr, Pinterest and YouTube.

On the hunt for polymer

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.”

Fantastic folded beads

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.

She shares her work on Instagram, Facebook and on Flickr.

Triple texture

Bugle and seed beads are embedded among the collaged areas of textures on Monica Rotta’s three-medallion necklace. The neutral colors make this piece both wearable and dramatic. Here’s a closeup of the textures.

A look at Monica’s Flickr and Facebook pages is like an instant vacation as you browse through her rustic northern Italian market stall and look at the glamourous women modeling her jewelry.

Want more? Here’s an earlier PCD post about Monica.

Winding homeward

Wiwat Kamolpornwijit admits that coming up with his new designs has been fun and finishing them, assembling them is not his favorite part of the process.

While he has folded and sculpted polymer in his art, this ribbon-like necklace and another spiraled link necklace point to a departure and new experiments.

Wiwat won top honors in the 2015 Niche Awards in the professional polymer category. He maintains a rigorous schedule of shows and also supplies a long list of galleries with his works. Here’s more of Wiwat’s work on Smith Galleries’ site.

You can follow along with his new developments on Facebook.

Summer vacation

Did you miss me? It was a long drive home from Minnesota with a stop to visit family in Chicago and seemed a good time to unplug for a couple days. I’m back! Hope you’re enjoying some down time and summer fun too.

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