The UK’s Karen Walker wraps her snowmen in mufflers with fashionably oversized buttons on their coats. They gather in a group with their pets, ready for winter.
Karen deepens the textures and highlights them with a dark wash then adds a few polka dots.
The simplicity of her shapes gives the scene added charm and you can see more examples on Instagram, her site, and on Facebook.
Feel the love and understanding in this small sculpture from Wisconsin’s Gina Griffith. Gina shows a deep understanding of children’s fears in her Dark Corners of the Nursery.
The strewn blocks, the bunny slippers, and the superhero cape capture the scene with a little girl clutching the covers as she imagines monsters under her bed.
Enjoy every step in Gina’s detailed process on Instagram and Facebook. And you’ll see the children who are her obvious inspirations.
The little kid in me wants the birthday cake Gina made recently. What lucky kids they are to have such a talented and loving mother. They’ll want to treasure this piece of her heart.
Thanks to Lindly Haunani for introducing PCD to Gina.
Even if you never learned to knit, Italy’s Leila Bidler demonstrates how you can simulate the look. She extrudes strings of polymer in shades of blue, twists them and lines them up…without dropping a stitch!
A second layer of stitching every inch or so gives the swatch the look of a fancier pattern and more complex knitting.
On Leila’s Instagram page she turns these faux knits into cozy cuffs and finishes them with a faux wood button for a wintry accessory.
A snowy day is a perfect time to check out this season’s crop of faux knit ideas. Every year there’s some new twist. PCD’s all-time favorites are still Juliya Laukhina’s from 2010.
If you’re looking for more fun behind-the-scenes tidbits, come on over to StudioMojo where we indulge in deep polymer chats every Saturday morning.
The slicker and more commercial the holiday frenzy gets, the more I appreciate roughly handmade, Bohemian, tribal, rustic, gypsy, hippie, ethnic designs like this pendant from Ukraine’s Lela Todua (Leland Jewelry).
Lela’s techniques and patterns follow her own whims. She pulls the mix of various textures together with color themes and accents of paint.
I realize that PCD featured Lela’s butterflies just recently. Once my eye locks onto a vibe, I find myself visiting and revisiting a collection to soak it up. Lela builds compelling stories as she picks and chooses an assortment of related components.
The Bonnie Bishoff Bio Bop brooch is quite a mouthful for mid-week. This polymer, copper, paint and steel wire mixed media pin is on its way to CraftBoston for one last holiday hurrah. While they look light and airy, Bonnie’s pieces are built on metal which makes them incredibly solid.
Betsey Baker and Kathleen Dustin will also have their wares in Boston on December 15-17. You can watch Betsey, Kathleen and Bonnie pack up and run to the show on Facebook and Instagram. These ladies work hard!
Russia’s Karina Formanova has created flocks of small bird brooches in a huge variety of colors. You can see from her Instagram focus that Karina has studied her birds.
She distills their colors and shapes down to combinations of subtle Skinner blends and delicate canes that make her birds seem to flutter on the wearer’s collar.
Follow her works in progress on her Facebook and see the range of colors in her shop. The brooches are nicely packaged in nests of matching papers.
These mud cloth pattern Bogolanfini polymer bangles strike a balance between tribal and contemporary jewelry. The colors are perfect and the patterns are purposely loose and energetic.
Each bracelet is formed from two curved mud cloth-patterned tube beads and four spacers joined with a twist. Another version joins over a wider cuff.
They’re from Massachusetts’ Kathleen de Quince Anderson and she sells some of her polymer creations at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington. See her signature heart box and most current works on Instagram.
This delightfully asymmetric pendant from Cecilia Leonini (impastarte) leads us into the weekend. The energetic mosaic reaches out in several directions, as if in celebration.
This piece appeared on the FoltBolt Facebook page. If you’re looking for color, you can count on FoltBolt to give you a jolt of inspiration and polymer art appears regularly in their features.
If your muse is befuddled or your mojo is misaligned, come on over to our group at StudioMojo, the Saturday newsletter that provides the spark, the reminder, the new perspective to set you straight again.
The first prize winner in the Arcilla Polimérica de España is this color explosion from Silvia Ortiz de la Torre.
Silvia’s riot of colored disks and squiggles are neatly grouped into a necklace that looks ready for New Year’s Eve. For more of her hot colors and unusual constructions, check Etsy and Flickr.
But wait! There’s more! Ten Spanish award winners are pictured on the guild’s Facebook page.
We need more polymer selfies!
This new self-portrait by Belgium’s Ann de Bode captures a sparkle and her sense of fashion. And it’s a nice break from the overworked and over-thought photos for Facebook pages that we usually see.
Ann’s an accomplished illustrator so she makes this little sclupt look deceptively easy. Still, wouldn’t it be fun to see more of these poly people popping up?
Ann’s latest book is based on old family photographs. Poke around on Ann’s Facebook page. Her ancestor’s clothes are fine and the story’s a good one.
