Eva Haskova will be teaching these Wavy Bangles at September’s EuroClayCarnival in Madrid.
These colors are groovier than Eva’s usual palette and the squished spacers add another funky note. The bangles have a flower child/ summer of love vibe that’s new for this Prague artist.
Eva tells the story of her move to polymer art in my book. She’s got a great eye, impeccable skills and she’s ready to teach. See more on her site and Facebook.
Maine’s Suzanne Anderson (Yikes Studio) warms the weather with the bright colors in her winter collection.
Assembling the blue and aqua links requires multiple bakings (see her baking method here). Then seed beads add a finishing note.
Suzanne finishes the inside of her bangles with contrasting patterns and highlights the bracelets with rhinestones surrounded by polymer bits.
If you need more heat, look at her fiesta colors and shop in her Etsy gallery. Just dive in anywhere on her site to be fully immersed in color. Here she is on Facebook (and you’ll want to browse her Pinterest too).
Suzanne admits that she likes all things fashion and is happy to mix metal clay, enameling, seed beads, fiber and more with her polymer.
Melanie West went all “spots and dots” while Donna Kato got “spikey” and Loretta Lam played “hide and seek” in the new work they just unveiled on Facebook in time for the season. The works have a loose and confident feel about them.
Not ready for the holidays? Join the rest of us in the crowd who have good intentions and are scrambling to get artworks finished (or started).
Settle down and remember that the holidays aren’t really about competition but about heartfelt expression.
Breathe and take in the beauty of what others have created.
If there’s anyone whose polymer art captures the heat of August, it’s Greece’s Anarina Anar.
The hot colors of her decorative shapes are made more intense as they bounce off the irregular black background on this wide bangle. To unify the look, both surfaces are roughly textured and accented.
She uses the same technique on pieces for necklaces, earrings and more for an effect that’s pure drama. Her Flickr and Facebook pages are full of these striking examples.
Dana Phamova (Fruitensse) brings us the perfect colors for July 4 with her Lifebuoy bangles. Red, white and blue will be everywhere in the U.S. today.
Look at all of Dana’s work on her Flickr site. She is a university student in the Czech Republic studying computer graphics. A number of other popular Czech artists and Dana have put together an online polymer school and you can hear her talking about their courses.
Americans aren’t the only ones with a streak of independence! Happy Independence Day!
Today squares popped out. These square bangles by Belgium’s Moise Vanden Broeck have been circulating around Pinterest and even though his post about them is a couple years old, the concept is fresh and the overlapped construction would be strong and attractive. Layers of square and rectangular clay pieces are stacked around a form and baked. Moise is a metalworker whose mind churns out polymer tools as well as designs.
Tanya Mayorova’s squares applied on a solid color bangle base continue our square theme. She takes a more painterly approach to her geometry, inserting small squares into larger ones. She uses the technique on beads as well. Clever, simple, effective!
Maine’s Suzanne Anderson has souped up her Yikes! website to better feature her colorful polymer and multi-media jewelry. The new site offers a updated web presence that reflects her evolving work. It includes a blog where she shares peeks into her studio, her kitchen and her head.
The blog also allows her to talk about the enamel and metal clay work that she mixes with polymer.
Offering seasonal collections (like these summery starfish bangles) prevents her from getting stale or burned out and separates her lines into neat categories. Go prowl around in her site, track down her links and give the new site a test drive. Is it time for a spring cleaning on your site? We’re freshening up PCDaily behind the scenes. Look for changes soon.
Angeliki Anar has been throwing around polymer colors with exhuberance recently. Here are just a couple of examples of what this Greek artist has been churning out.
On these earrings Angeliki slices flat pieces of color that have been dusted with rainbow flecks (how does she do that) and shapes them into shallow cones. Contrasting edges heighten the color mix further. When she adds a glaze, you’d swear they were ceramic or perhaps enamel.
On the bangles she textures center beads that are captured between black polymer spirals. Take some time to soak up the warmth radiating from her work on Flickr and on her Facebook page. Have a warm, sunny weekend.
These scrap bangles from Australia’s Debbie Crothers have a party vibe! Don’t you love those gold leafed and Jones-Toned dots that she tossed on to fill in the gaps? Debbie took her not- quite-right pile and turned it into something great that suits my mood as I celebrate post 2000 today. We’ve gotten bolder and better!
I jumped in the wayback machine and looked at the September 2005 posts. The photos were much smaller. Remember, we had tiny monitors then. Most of the links work!
Can you believe this tame and subdued early mosaic from Laurie Mika? She’s surely embraced color and claimed her own style in a big way since then. We’ve come a long way, baby!
Thanks to you faithful readers for helping to turn that early not-quite-right blog into something very good and have a great weekend. Happy 2000.
The Synergy fallout continues with Rebecca Watkins’ Floral Bangle. After attending a Seth Savarick session on planning your projects, Rebecca decided walk the talk.
She wanted to work on more complex projects that required planning, precision, and polish so she took her usual methods of working to the next level. The process wasn’t without pitfalls that she recounts on her blog. She’s ready to keep going.
Part of Rebecca’s inspiration also came from this Curl-Up bangle that Christine Dumont wore. The openwork makes the cuff appear delicate but I examined it myself and it was very tough and sturdy (using Kato clay). Christine made her bangle as she was rethinking cane slices on her site, Voila.eu.com, for a module in the popular How to Become a Better Artist series.
Don’t miss Rebecca’s Saturday post about what she learned in Jeff Dever’s session. Jeff taught the crowd how to keep an eye out for unusual materials that cost next to nothing. So smart!
