Polymer Clay Daily

Back to school this fall

Your online presence is your showcase, your gallery! Pay attention to it. Polymer artists can tell you how enthusiastically I will jump on my soapbox to rant about this subject.

Fellow blogger Susan Lomuto (DailyArtMuse) nags artists too and she offers you an easy solution with her DIY Artist Websites, an online class about how to construct and maintain your own web portfolio.

All you have to do is to look at the spectacular sites of polymer artists Rachel Gourley, Sabine Speisser, and Tory Hughes, all Susan’s students, to see how helpful the class can be.

I’ve taken Susan’s classes and I can tell you that they are jam-packed with surprising resources and time-saving tips. She’s a superb researcher and a terrific teacher. Class starts September 7. Sign up now!

Seuss-isms for Success

Wright circus necklace

Another spirited necklace! Today’s Paradise Circus is from Nova Scotia’s Jenna Wright. Extrusions are coiled around some spheres then carved. Extruded slices are applied to others.

Jenna’s Etsy shop name is Boxes for Groxes and what we know about her we learn only from her colorful, playful aesthetic.

A little more research revealed that her shop name comes from Dr. Seuss’ Seuss-isms for Success whose whimsy fits nicely with Jenna’s art. Read the whole tongue twister here.

Slipping disks

This splash of color from Toronto’s Dorothy Siemens jolts us into a new week. Flat disks of polymer in turquoise, gold and cobalt are interspersed with spheres and a focal lentil covered with mokume gane. A graphic artist, Dorothy leans toward primitive, tribal and bohemian designs with lots of asymmetry.

The color continues on her Flickr site where you’ll see how Dorothy’s knitting skill meshes with her polymer creations. She makes buttons and scarf pins, of course!

Polymer bail beauty

Zuzana, from the Czech Republic canes and collages pendants in an increasingly interesting way. The thin buna cord accents running through the polymer bail on the top of this pendant fit right in with the rest of the design.

She nicely attributes her designs to her teachers and then takes flight on her own as you can see from her Flickr photos.

I’ve taken flight too. Checking in from the road and back home soon.

Life is like a bowl of polymer

Eakes bowl

From this angle you can hardly tell what Julie Eakes is up to with her extruded polymer mosaics. If you tip the bowl a delightful secret is revealed.

Read about how cane ends from one face project propelled Julie in a more sculptural direction. Of course she encountered problems she hadn’t planned on and found there was no turning back once she started.

This one-of-a-kind bowl is 9″ in diameter by 3.25″ deep. She plans to go bigger next time.

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.

Faster, higher, stronger polymer

Olympics

Someone had to polymerize the Olympics, right? The gold medal goes to Croatia’s Nikolina Otrzan and her Citius, Altius, Fortius necklace. That’s the Olympic motto – Faster, Higher, Stronger.

Nikolina’s polymer rings are colored with chalks, sealed with a glossy coating, and joined with large jump rings.

She’s also been perfecting her writing on polymer, hiding messages in her graphic designs for pendants. Browse around her Flickr and her Etsy sites and enjoy an Olympic weekend.

Pyramid power polymer

Pyramids from Fanmaus

We’ve been on an extruding craze lately and here’s one more for you to try while it’s hot and the clay is soft.

Fanmaus (Tatiana Begacheva) from Russia brings us this cheerful jumble of pyramids covered in extruded strings of clay.

I’ll guess that she baked the base forms first, then she adhered the strings to the triangles and fired again. The chunks move and the colors spiral to give the necklace movement and interest.