Before I left town I finished my porch mosaic and I think it says “welcome” in a way that suits me. Adding the mosaic frame around the window in the door gives the entry the final touch it needed. Here are a few closeups and here’s the earlier post.
I’m getting settled in Colorado and hope you’ll distract yourselves with this while I get my bearings..
The Les Ethiopiques site is full of free tutorials and French polymer fun that will keep you kids busy in the back seat while I travel to Colorado for a week in the mountains. With any luck, I’ll keep posting daily about old friends, new products and moose.
Les Ethiopique’s faux leather ties in nicely with this week’s earlier Biker Chick post. Though her tutorials are in French, the photos say it all and you needn’t translate to get the gist. Just look for “tuto” and click away. Her generosity in creating all these free how-to’s is refreshing.
Thanks to Eva Ménager for the link. Have a refreshing weekend!
The armature for Christi Friesen’s latest wrap vessels may make you smile. She uses a ball of wet toilet paper!
Christi reveals that, “The technique is simply to take some toilet paper, get it wet, wad it into a ball and wring out the excess water. Wrap the clay around the ball and sculpt! The paper provides firmness to work against so you’re not poking through the vessel when you try to add details. Once the vessel is baked, just submerge the pot in water until the toilet paper gets all dissolvey. Then pull it out. It’s fun.”
Her new vessels will be in the next issue of American Style magazine and her annual eBay sale is happening this week.
Julie Eakes is pushing the boundaries of extrusion-based mosaics again. This time she used a looser palette and a more stylized image as her starting point. Would the image still be discernable?
This is the small version of the finished cane. I’m partial to the dimensional original cane. Mixing the palette for one of these works is an arduous dance between Photoshop and the pasta machine. She created 2,000 color samples on the computer to arrive at her last palette. No small feat! Read her story here.
The cable guy appeared and we’re back in business. Heaven!
Yep, LaLa Ortiz used polymer to create this faux bicycle chain bracelet. Lighter and less oily than the real version, don’t you think? There are better pictures here.
It’s a clever chain design which LaLa promises to upload to her Web site. She’d been thinking about the bracelet for a couple of years and it came to fruition at this year’s Polypalooza at Lake Tahoe. Clever biker girl.
Our wires got crossed or the squirrels chewed them or some such disaster has upset our household. Worse than not having internet is listening to my husband mourn the loss of his tv. If I’m slow to respond to email or a bit sloppy with my coding, you’ll know why. Waitin’ for the cable guy.
Leslie Blackford is breathing a sigh of relief as she finishes her first major batch of orders for galleries. The tagline for her “carnies” series is “Damn everything but the circus.” The theme continues through the sculptures to her imaginative packaging.
Pendant cords travel up through the top of her boxes through a slit that holds each pendant in place. Stacked together they form an impromptu fun house display of her sideshow characters. Her catalog is printed as a circus flier.
Leslie’s companion packaging and promotions amplify the impact of her intensely personal and engaging work, an edgy combination of dark and whimsical.
Leslie’s theme is based on an e. e. cummings quote that may resonate with you on a Monday, “…damn everything that is grim, dull, motionless, unrisking, inward turning, damn everything that won’t get into the circle, that won’t enjoy, that won’t throw its heart into the tension, surprise, fear and delight of the circus, the round world, the full existence.“
Nicole Johnson’s polymer Mealy Monsters finish our mostly non-jewelry week in style, monster style.
Her monsters have pets and sweetly flawed personalities that help you get past their horns, fangs and bulging eyes.
Leslie Levings’ Beastlies have that same sort of friendly monster appeal with their cute spots of color and tiny teeth. Check out pictures of her sales table at the recent Comic Con.
Friendly monsters are all the rage in August but beware, the Halloween fanatics are mixing batches of orange and black polymer for darker, scarier creations. Thanks for playing along and have a monstrously fun weekend.
I was going to stay away from pretty polymer jewelry this week but then Barbara Bechtel (via ArtBeadScene) showed me two things I couldn’t resist – pennants and lacey stamps.
Pennants are all the rage and Barbara’s polymer versions are cheery and hip with no sewing required. Her bits of lace stamped into polymer create a trendy accessory. Read more about Barbara and look inside her studio on this blog.
Several people asked about how the polymer mosaic on my porch would withstand Ohio’s weather. I primed and painted the frame on both sides per my expert cabinetmaker’s instructions. The tiles are held in place with construction adhesive.
My experience with polymer-covered Christmas lights that survived years of snow and rain lead me to believe that the mosaic will do just fine. And really, I’ll need an excuse to create some new porch decor in a few years anyway.
This four-foot polymer mosaic for our home’s new front porch was icing on this summer’s cake. The shape of our house had come to resemble a bowling alley after several long additions. It needed some details to restore its curb appeal.
Architect/polymer artist Maggie Maggio helped us with the porch design which I envisioned in Photoshop and my husband made into reality. He was happy to add more square footage to his man cave in the bargain. You can follow the porch progress here.
My mosaic (polymer glazed with colored liquid polymer) balances out the offset front door. The drawer of rubber stamps and molds that I’ve collected were finally put to good use. I was surprised at how the variety of stamps could make a cohesive aesthetic.
Even though I created some of the stamps myself, I’ll always look at this piece and express gratitude to Laurie Mika for inspiration and to Barbara McGuire, Wendy Malinow, Victoria James and Helen Breil for favorite images.
Long ago Richard Bassett brought his stash of metal stampings to a Shrinemont retreat and we scurried to make molds. All those collected bits and bobs found a home in a colorful and sentimental piece.
Now it looks like the old front door needs a similar embellishment! My husband cut out a masonite base so it’s back to the studio to make more tiles. To be continued.
Wowcharmers.com show us how younger artists are using polymer, even if we’re not World of Warcraft fans. The site’s author is secretive about the designers and it looks like these elaborately dressed characters originate in China. You’ll find larger pictures on the Facebook page.
One of the early favorite polymer character artists is Bulgarian Dinko Tilov. His dinosaurs and monsters predate the gamer figures. Check out Dinko’s tutorials here. Dinko and his brother Boris recently put out a new book, Sculpting Mythical Creatures. Dinko gives tips on how to make his sculptures on his blog and video tutorials here.
The cartoon and gamer-based polymer toy crowd speaks a language all its own and they are a growing global force.
