Polymer Clay Daily

Young’s katamari

Enough with pretty polymer jewelry this week. Time for a change and I love the idea of Camille Young’s katamari ball. Camille built this sculpture on the fly, responding to calls from FanGamers during their online officecam show.

The ball is based on a puzzle-action video game. The game’s plot concerns a prince on a mission to rebuild the stars. This is achieved by rolling a magical, highly adhesive ball called a katamari around various locations, collecting increasingly greater objects until the ball has grown large enough to become a star.

Camille shows what accumulated on her polymer version of the ball in the video to the right. Here’s hoping that your personal katamari picks up polymer accomplishments through the week.

Riotous polymer

Harue Fujikawa’s polymer vegetables are corny. And since it’s Friday and tomorrow we shop at our farmers market, his laughing bi-color corn looks just right.

Harue has pages of lively vegetables, dolls and Japanese characters.The translator isn’t much help but his site is a visual riot.

And while we’re on the subject of riotous, check out les p’titsmobiles, strange polymer sea creatures made by a French girl in Denmark. I found her on the readers’ link page (put yours there).

If you have any phobias about vegetables or sea urchins, you may want to sit this one out. The rest of you have a riotous weekend.

Wallace’s new twists

One look at Amy Wallace’s polymer chevron beads makes me want to try chevron canes again. The bright colors give them a happy, ethnic, graphic look that’s very much in vogue.

Amy has shut down her old Ovenfried site and the “stacker” bead tutorial that she popularized has vanished (sigh). She’s opened a new blog and Etsy sites. On her Flickr page her megastackers and snakeskin beads show off the newest twist on her old stacker technique.

Big bangles at Arrowmont

Seth Savarick doesn’t believe in small as you can see from his latest polymer necklace at the left and the bangles he inspires in his workshops (see Friday’s post). The wearers of his creations must be prepared for conversation.

Seth will teach his method, Think Big Work Big: Large Scale Jewelry Forms in Polymer Clay, at Arrowmont the last week of September.

Cynthia Toops will teach her Bracelets, Bangles and Cuffs class at Arrowmont September 5-11.

Volkova’s mix and match

Where do the bits of crochet end and the polymer begin? Moscow’s Oxana Volkova mixes her talents so cleverly that I can’t tell where one stops and the other begins. She performs her sleight of hand with felt and fabric…and even shoes!

The possibilities are endless. Oxana’s imagination and enthusiasm are contagious and may put a spring in your step as you head to your studio.

Polymer chains by Carlton

Chains have gone through a transformation lately. The links are big and uneven. Shapes have changed. Sizes may be mixed and matched within a piece.

This Big Linx chain from London’s Debbie Carlton illustrates the point in polymer.

Debbie’s also a fan of the big bangle and you can see her work best on her Flickr gallery. The bangles were inspired by a workshop Debbie took with Seth Savarick.

If you like polymer chains, you’ll want to revisit Wendy Malinow’s version. And, come to think of it, there’s an ancient version I created in my archives. Guess I’ve been hooked on chains for a while. Escape your chains this weekend.

Power’s Art Bead Scene collaborations

The goal of Heather Powers’s Art Bead Scene daily blog is to unite bead artists and jewelry designers who use art beads in their work. (Here’s Heather’s personal blog.)

The collaborations of the Art Bead Scene’s wire, metal, glass and polymer artists result in trendy, nostalgic assemblages of friends’ work and scavenged beads from the past.

Heather’s Humblebeads gallery on Flickr tracks how Heather’s polymer beads have been used by 23 of her fellow designers over the last couple of years (like this necklace from Lorelei Eurto that uses Heather’s work as a focal bead).

Most of the members of her group concentrate on one medium and when it’s time to create a wearable piece, they happily pick and choose the components from a wide array of baubles.

Other artists who work with polymer on the Art Bead Scene roster of editors include Cindy Gimbrone and Lynn Davis (hope I didn’t miss anyone). Warning: the links lead you to lovely sites that may suck up your afternoon.

Fabi’s fabulous combinations

To polymer artists, there’s nothing more appealing than a neat pile of coordinated canes. Show us the resulting bouquet of flowers and you’ve got our attention. These lovelies are from Madrid’s Fabi (fperezajates).

A few minutes on her Flickr site will reveal how she’s combined polymer with felt, crochet, books and wood. She even shares a mini-tutorial about turning a nail brush into a letter holder.

I admire Fabi’s experimentation with household items and decorative accessories.

Moving beyond bowls and frames, she embellishes drawers and makes sewing tool holders. Keep your eye on Fabi’s work.

Mika’s mosaics

This polymer wall art from Laurie Mika not only looks good with my site’s color scheme (always a consideration), it also reminds me to think in three dimensions on a similar project I’m working on for my new porch.

Thumbing through her site made me feel like I’d just taken a quick class. Her tiles are colorful and richly layered with a confident looseness and freedom

In creating her “Urban Icons” she uses a variety of overlapping techniques – mosaic design, painting, rubber stamping, collage, embossing, beading, and embedding just about anything into polymer clay.

She’s posted a growing list of workshops and you can also refer to her Mixed Media Mosaics book for more instruction on her lusciously embellished techniques.