Polymer Clay Daily

Click to send your valentine

Your chance to send some valentine joy is waiting at the top of the right column. Your donation, no matter how big or small, will help the women of the Samunnat women’s project in eastern Nepal build a home.

Ron Lehocky will double the love by matching your gifts up to $2000.

PCDaily will bring you regular reports about the project. I’ll tell you about all the wonderful ways polymer artists have already helped their sisters thrive. Go on and CLICK to add your love.

The backstory

Ron Lehocky is no stranger to fundraising projects. He has made and sold over 20,000 polymer hearts to support the Kids Center in Louisville, Kentucky. The ones pictured here are part of his 2013 Valentines Day collection.

Australia’s Wendy Moore contacted Ron to purchase some hearts to take to Nepal. She thought the women in the Samunnat project would be inspired by the work of an American doctor who developed a small polymer project that became remarkably successful at helping children.

As they corresponded, Ron and Wendy shared stories. Wendy told him about the abuse and discrimination that the Samunnat women had endured and how the polymer skills that they learned had transformed their lives and made them agents of change.

She described how the group had moved its offices four times in the last six years because of arbitrary and frequent rent increases. Their first facility, shown here, was little more than an open storefront on a busy highway.

A gift of a small parcel of land and growing success in marketing their beads abroad allowed Samunnat to consider building a facility. For under $10,000 they could construct their own building that would give them the room they need to continue and grow.

To Ron, the building sounded like a small step with a big payoff. He thought it over. To kickstart a construction fund, Ron offered to match donations up to $2000. Isn’t that fantastic?

More to this story on Monday. Why wait? CLICK now.

Winsome polymer

Chifonie on PCDaily

Lucille, Hortense and Annie greet you with flirty smiles. Chifonie’s Les Trois Filles are 4″ long-necked brooches made using a combination of canes and delicate drawing. Their softly rouged cheeks, tilted heads and floral clothing give them a winsome appeal that’s very different from most faces in polymer.

See more of Chifonie’s distinctive style on her Etsy site and Flickr pages.

Polymer goes BAD

Ponsawan Sila uploads her latest experiments to Flickr (and Facebook). Here she shows us Pardo translucent stretched over a steel wire armature, colored with watercolor pencils, and highlighted with gilder’s paste.

“Two years ago, I join the group called Ring A Day and we finished 365 rings in one year. My rings were exhibited and in a book, and I sold many of them,” Ponsawan says. This year she joined the brooch-a-day group (BAD) and she’s right on schedule.

Polymer with legs

When you deconstruct these wonderful yellow bugs by Debbie Jackson, you’ll see how she parlays limited colors and basic cane shapes into delightful insects with quirky personalities and a fashion sense.

Even those who don’t like creepy crawlies will be won over. You can see how she used these canes in other applications on Debbie’s Facebook page.

Aged polymer

Polymer artists like Kansas’ Christina Butler (Polygolems) are using the new faux aged metal finishes so well that my job has gotten harder. Is it metal? Is it polymer…or something else?

You’ll have to look closely to figure it out. Christina makes it even harder by mixing real metals with her faux. The small pieces are copper – I think.

There’s more to oggle on her Facebook pages and in her Etsy shop.

 

Best holiday gift


It’s warm in Australia and Sabine Spiesser needed some summer color for her brooches. Her display in the Waverly Arts Society netted Sabine the Best In Show award. Well deserved, wouldn’t you agree?

You can see a couple of the samples Sabine created for Helen Breil’s new book on her Flickr site.

Keep those juices flowing

Jodi Creager is wishing that all her friends receive a big bottle of this precious elixir this season. As Jodi says, “Merry Whatever!”

Damm style!

My shoulder aches because of Christine Damm’s sumptuous style. Let me explain.

I’m silhouetting much of the artwork for my upcoming Global Polymer book (August 2013), removing the backgrounds in Photoshop like I do every day for PCD. This weekend I was sailing through the long list of assignments from the publisher until I hit upon Christine Damm’s photos.

The wires, the twists, the textures! Her beauties are dense with details that have to be outlined and carefully cut out on the computer. I’m taking a break, giving my mouse hand a rest and showing off my/her work.

You may enjoy Christine’s most recent post where she talks about her style and how it developed. “When you begin to dedicate substantial time to your artistic work, whatever it is, your style begins to emerge, no matter where your creative experimentation takes you,” she explains. ” Before I began using polymer as my primary medium, I felt that I really didn’t have a style,” she says. There’s no mistaking Christine’s style now and her pieces tell great stories.

Polymer squiggles

This colorful polymer squiggle ring is from Serbia’s Milena Babic and Miloš Samardžic’s new Bold Geometry series. Generally the pair, known as Tramps and Glams, feature film stars, artists and lost souls in cubist constructions that become polymer brooches and pendants. Their geometric pieces pile polymer twists and curls into constructions that look like confetti gathered up for a party.

We need your squiggles!

…on our “Habits” survey. Ten easy questions ask where you learn about polymer and how you share your work. Your answers are important, anonymous and much appreciated! A few quick checkmarks will help Judy Belcher and me gather data for our presentation at Synergy.

If you missed the first survey, you can still fill it out here.

Tweedy polymer

Israel’s Angela Barenholtz specializes in dots and dashes in polymer. Her tutorial shows you how to combine a rainbow of colors into pleasant tweeds that mix comfortably with the most riotous patterns.

With its bright, sunny colors, Angela’s Flickr site provides us with relief from the past several days of gray and stormy skies. I hope you’re all safe, warm and dry.