This Little Boat Brooch from Spain’s Iratxe Maruri will send you sailing through all her online shops and blogs. Iratxe is an illustrator and mixed media artist whose beach scenes and creatures have charm and childishness without seeming treacly sweet.
Iratxe has a very thorough web identity. You can see her inspirations and studio setup on Pinterest and find lots more on Flickr, Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr plus several shops.
Dan Cormier has been unveiling the 27 pins entered in the Broken Internet Project that he presented at EuroSynergy. The pin at the right by Dan is what got the ball rolling.
Each participant reintrepreted his design as it mutated from artist to artist.
Dan’s original concept referred to two landscapes, one rural and one urban, bisected by a bold zigzag. The jagged stripe represented energy as well as a split, maybe a broken heart. Several of the artists clearly picked up on the theme and some saw it differently. Read all about the project on Flickr and on their Facebook page.
Dan and Tracy will be teaching at Master Class Camp in Maryland in July. This mysterious piece is from the Form and Finish: Bare Essentials class.
No matter how long you study this smooth polymer belly-button shape, its construction looks impossible. Dan’s specific methods for finishing right from the start could make all the difference in your work. See the list of classes here.
Spain’s Iratxe Maruri proves that not all Easter eggs are alike. Hers are dotted, pale and smiling as they stand up straight on their bases.
Then she shows us how to make a low tech, high fashion statement using only small round balls of polymer flattened, layered on a dome and accented with paint. She works in a playful and charming way.
We wrap up the week by moving from folding to wrapping with this Striped Cage Pin from Maine’s Bonnie Bishoff. Strips of polymer patterns wind and swirl around each other to form a vortex.
This new work for the April CraftBoston and other new pieces on her revamped website show the direction that Bonnie is moving with her jewelry. Of course you’ll want to check out her furniture inlays as well. Bonnie’s also on Facebook here.
Muir’s free tutorial
Sculpey has revamped their company website too. The new site includes a gem of a free tutorial from Melanie Muir. In just a few steps she shows some signature tricks for her distinctively framed mokume gane.
Look for more folds this year. Here you see Susan Hyde wrap her fabric-like sheet around curled snakes to create a brooch that you can find on Facebook.
Then Dan Cormier combines three techniques he’s researched into one in this Blurred Lines brooch.
A veneer of blurred colors runs over a light folded background until it hits a dieformed dark area.
This brooch is featured on the cover of Dan and Tracy’s newest e-book, Blurred Lines: Blended Patterns in Polymer Clay, that the duo will offer online soon. Read the whole story here. Are folds in your future?
These organic dot earrings and brooches from Kerstin Rupprecht are intriguing. Surely they are polymer and the shine could be resin or liquid polymer.
I’ve spent too much time trying to figure out how she did this so I’ll leave it to you. What do you think? There aren’t too many clues on Flickr. Her fashionable and mysterious creations look like cells or growths. Very hip and mysterious.
Lindly Haunani has hit the color sweet spot with her latest series of brooches which she produces in a range of color blends. Mud, gold Premo and a Rolls Royce of a pasta machine have helped her along the way.
Of course a degree in printmaking, years of creating art and teaching polymer and a supreme color sense also contribute to her masterful combinations.
But back to the mud. A dollop of gray/brown clay is mixed into some colors to mute them ever so slightly. Gold added to others brings out a lovely luminosity. She mixes a 9″ x 12″ sheet of rainbow colors, tweaking it until the colors sing.
“The rest,” she says, “is a meditative process of making thin veneers, cutting them, combining them, flipping them so that dark-to-light butts against light-to-dark.” Once the patterns are assembled, she impresses them with 120-grit sandpaper to give them a soft, textile-like surface.
Lindly sold these brooches when she was teaching in Europe recently to help finance her new electric dough roller (like this one). “It’s like driving a Rolls Royce,” she admits.
You can learn some of Lindly’s color secrets in the book she and Maggie Maggio wrote. See where she’s teaching and see more of her color magic on her site and on Facebook where these brooches have started a buzz.
Using sheets of patterned clay, bits of fabric and hardware finds, Dayle Doroshow satisfies her craving for shoes.
She hunts for historic patterns or fashionable footwear that appeal to her and then lets her imagination take flight. With the addition of a pin back, the shoes become brooches. Dayle shows the basic process on this free video tutorial.
Did Ron Lehocky think we’d celebrate Valentines Day without featuring the King of Hearts? Not possible.
His production of polymer heart brooches reached 25,801 yesterday and if you multiply that by ten you’ll have calculated how much this Kentucky doctor has raised for kids. You helped him by donating your scrap.
This year he also set his sights on helping the Samunnat women in Nepal and he was relentless. He knows how art can make a difference in lives and how the significance of bit of effort ripples out as others join in. Love to all who were part of that effort this year.
Ron used Lucy Struncova’s extruder disks to make this special edition of heart patterns. He has finally jumped onto social media and shares his methods and his news on Facebook.
If your winter has been as snowy as ours, you’ll sigh to see these signs of spring from Germany’s Jana Lehmann. Examine her Calyx series of pendants as well.
These polymer Flower Vases are brooches with flowers rendered in her inimitable graphic style. Her Facebook film shows her progression with polymer over the past few years.
Now she’s teaching workshops and has written a new book available in March. The best overview of Jana’s work is on Flickr and you can still sneak a look at her blog here.
The brightness of her palette seems to melt the snow. Have a warm weekend.
