Polymer in the board room

This Spring Sprang Sprung table by Maine’s Bonnie Bishoff and J. M. Syron started small and grew bigger.

Bonnie explains that, “The table started as a request from a client to make a board room table and she wanted us to veneer the surface with a design inspired by a tryptich wall piece about 40 inches across.”

The polymer artist/furniture maker duo had already made several large fantastical pieces for the client.

The design concept showed an 8 ft table that would be 9 times larger than the original wall piece and would require 12 pounds of clay.

Bonnie shared a number of in-process photos that will give you an idea of what is required for a piece of this size. (I’ve slid her photos over from Facebook so that you can see them all at a glance.

Bonnie works in jewelry as well as furniture. Visit Artful Home, Bonnie’s shawl pin site, Facebook and their website to acquaint yourself with the wide span of their work. Start your week big!

Polymer deviant

Nicole Johnson’s Mealy Monsters may have caused the outage at PCDaily yesterday. Some serious gremlins pawed through the server and partied on the database. These guys look like they might be the culprits.

Each of Nicole’s buggy-eyed polymer creatures comes with a story and issues and a nose for trouble. Even if monsters scare you, it’s hard not to fall for these misfits.

The Lowbrows were born from that sludge at the bottom of the tea cup and gave Nicole an excuse to shop at antique stores.

You can find the critters at Facebook, Instagram and Flickr. It’s most enlightening to check out Nicole’s Pinterest page and see what steers her to polymer deviants.

We chased them out of the server. PCD is back up and running fine.

More scrap tweaks

Building on yesterday’s tutorial, we look at how France’s Anne-Sophie Bonnay tweaks her scrap stripes, gouging across them to create a woven pattern.

She enhances the effect by impressing the polymer with a fabric texture.

Anne-Sophie offers more items made from the scrap sheet on her web site.

She even uses the curly gouged out strings, pressing them onto a solid colored sheet to create an abstract pattern. Her imitation tiger’s eye pattern is another riff on this scrap stripe theme.

Scrappy polymer

Crisp fall days make colors brights and simple masks funnier. Look at these new pins from Susan Hyde (she’s mostly on Facebook).

A flat oval polymer face with a circle cut out gets her started on completely silly faces. A few dots and strings of clay turn into crazily raised eyebrows, a moustache or a glob of hair. A slice of any old cane will work for eyes.

Don’t forget teeth or a tongue and everybody gets a pair of jump ring earrings. Perfect Halloween favors.

Start from scrap

As long as we’re going for easy and effective art, check out Debbie Crothers’ scrappy cane tutorial.

I learned a similar version from Carol Blackburn who tames the tutorial and turns the results into tidy stripes and precise geometrics. Any way you handle this tute, it’s a great one to have at your disposal.

Making rainbows

Sometimes all we need is color to brighten our day. Today Ronit Golan’s stacks of midnight rainbow colors will do the trick. Hint: she adds dark blue to her usual 24 colors for this version.

The cutout disks are ready to slide into the extruder tube. Ronit combines the resulting shapes into canes. She offers her color and stacking advice for free in this post.

Find out what Ronit makes with the extruded results on her Flickr and Etsy sites. Give yourself a time limit before you check out her Pinterest page or you could happily wander for hours. She adds her accidents and brainstorms to Facebook.

Polymer hunters

David Forlano models his newest tube necklace. This version is spiked and curved with striped surfaces. Gouges carved out of the tubes reveal the inner contrasting colors of the tusk-like shapes.

Four layers of polymer claws make the piece bushy and lush and suitable for an African hunter…or a New Mexican artist in this case.

The new design will appear in Ford & Forlano’s upcoming shows.

Watch how they work by viewing their YouTube videos. Catch up with them on their site and on Facebook.

Fantasy polymer

We’ve had our spook on all week and Jane Priser’s alien takes us to the weekend in style.

Her latest cosmic creature is 15″ tall with colorful skin made of twisted polymer and painted glass eyes.

This Colorado nighttime artist calls her work visionary and fantasy. ” I have found that creating in the night hours allows me to harvest dream time,” she says. Lots of cats creep into the dreams of this former potter.

Here she is on Etsy and Flickr. Have a fantastic weekend.

Visionaries

Do you have your own vision for where you want to go with polymer?

Sign up for my premium weekend newsletter over at StudioMojo.org if you’re ready to take a more in-depth look at where your art and your community are headed, join us.

Polymer poultry

You may see a teapot where Layl McDill sees a fanciful chicken. It flew out of her studio as soon as it was finished.

Layl layers slices from her brightly patterned canes onto vases, pitchers, teapots and more. She piles on the color (see the in-process shot below), hoping to catch the viewer’s eye and inspire wonder.

In this issue of The Polymer Arts, Layl is one of four featured artists who approach polymer with whimsey and humor.

Layl adds to her site regularly and puts her most recent work on her Facebook page.

Monster veggies

Put a couple of eyes on your fruits and veggies and suddenly they’re ready for Halloween. You can see how it works for Hawaii’s Kiva Atkinson and her miniature blood oranges.

“I enjoy making unusual things, from strange Tudor food, to ethnic cuisines, to cheeky mice doing naughty things. My imagination gets to run wild all the time!” she says.

This tray of miniatures ready for baking shows you how Kiva ran wild with her vegetables. There’s more on her blog and on Flickr.

Tonight’s the night

For those of you who love tools, bop over to Craftcast this evening (~~8:00 EST~~) for the free tool talk session. Save your seat by registering here (you’ll get the notes even if you can’t stay for the party).

Oops, that’s 7:30 EST…be there!

Undead polymer

Don’t look now but monsters are beginning to creep into the polymer pages online.

Melissa Terlizzi’s trio of Zombie Brooches: Accessories for the Wicked and the Undead (above) are very weird and wearable.

Melissa’s from Virginia and you’ll find her on Facebook.

Denise Baldwin (left) cooked up a batch of exotic creatures on Flickr. She’s identified herself as ODDimagination so this line of creepies shouldn’t be a surprise. She’s on Etsy. Denise is from Virginia too! Coincidence?

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