“For this pendant I used a convergence pattern inspired by a quilting template,” says Switzerland’s Sandra Trachsel. The colors buzz against each other as the stripes alternately grow thinner and fatter.
What draws you further in are the chunky areas of color outside the center square. There’s much to deconstruct and reassemble as you study how the pattern works. Sandra must have been a quilter in another life.
Something fishy is happening with Mary Anne Loveless. Lately this Utah artist has been drawn to making her Poissons series with beautifully patterned scales made from cane slices.
Most of her fish are hollow and measure from 10 inches to a foot long. Some of these beauties have ferocious looking teeth. Some shimmer with colorful Skinner blends, stripes and dots.
Are they wall art? Free-standing sculptures? Maybe she’ll tell us. Can’t you envision a school of these swimming across a wall? Right now you can see them best on Flickr. With any luck she’ll post them in her Squarespace shop soon.
Dancing Flowers is an appropriate name for this bunch of polymer flowers by Zuzana Liptakova of Slovakia. She mixes delicately edged translucent petal cane slices with crystals, metal chain, beads and findings, draping them with style.
To make them into earrings, Zuzana hangs small glitzy jewels on chain from the center of a circle of petals. The colors are perfect for spring with just a bit of what looks like embossing powder worked in for interest.
She’s been working in clay since 2010 and has already attended an impressive list of master classes. With her spring flowers you can see how Zuzana is finding her own distinct style that you can discover in her Sashe gallery, on Flickr and Facebook.
Noelia Contreras from Barcelona has patched together these polymer brooches for a class at Polimeralia in Valencia, August 7-11.
She’s a whiz at zentangle, she canes, she silkscreens, she extrudes. Looks like there’s nothing she won’t try.
Luckily you have all weekend to browse through Noelia’s crisp, bright works on Flickr and Facebook.
Delaware’s Arden Bardol is one busy polymer artist, selling her work through a long list of galleries, on Artful Home, and with a number of shows thrown into the mix.
And she’s been a repeat Niche Award winner and finalist (2014).
Her Wings and Windows brooch gives a hint of her training in architecture. She tried interior design and ceramics as well. Arden combined her talents and settled on polymer clay. She started selling in earnest in 2005 through her Art-Ture studio, a blend of art and architecture.
Her 3″ wide Petals brooch is part of her current collection and comes in a number of colorways with companion earrings. Cane slices are coordinated, shaped and layered on their edges into a flower with small splashes of dots and dashes. There’s more to explore on Facebook.
Does Arden’s volume of work make you want to get busy this week?
Along with the photo of her spectacular Tide Pool Bowl, Carol Simmons offers the details of its construction on her blog.
You can see the components she amassed and follow along as she slices them to precise and consistent thickness. She assembled the patterns into a pleasing collage, pushed the edges together and flattened the whole sheet.
It’s nerve wracking to hear how she lifted the delicate thin sheet and placed it into a thrift-store bowl that served as a form.
Carol’s years as a biologist/ecologist certainly contribute to her ability to replicate botanical colors and diversity. In her career she spent months mapping vegetation in California, the Rocky Mountains and the Artic.
Zoom in and you’ll feel lost in a tide pool. What a masterpiece of color and form! See more samples of her work on Flickr and stay in touch on Facebook. Carol has collected quite a treasure trove of colors and designs on Pinterest as well.
North Carolina’s Barbara McGuire has posted her polymer fairies, butterflies, bees and other fantasy women beads. Barbara says that, “I did a search for fairy beads on ebay – and there were 2500 listings! Butterfly beads 22500 listings! Guess I am not the only one who likes fairies and butterflies!”
Barbara’s beads may be the most ethereal and fantastical, however.
She layers flora and fauna cane slices on top of her distinctive mokume gane. She’s added another how-to tutorial video that explains her methods on her YouTube channel.
Barbara has flitted like a butterfly around the polymer community for more years than she’ll probably admit. You can catch up with her on Facebook and Flickr (and ebay, of course).
Jewel Thief challenged Claire Wallis to work with a large cane. She’d wanted to create a magpie for some time and this one ended up as a tree ornament. The cane is subtly shaded and the diamond was made using these instructions from Tranchedecane.
See more of Claire’s work on her Deviant site, on Flickr, and on Facebook. Thanks to Sonya Girodon for catching this link. Here’s hoping you catch some fun this weekend.
France’s Tracey Stevens (Polyflavour) launched an Indegogo campaign to help finance her booth at the Grand Marché de Noel de Créateurs show.
Her polymer canes are inspired by cartoons from the 1920s, 30s and 40s. “I want people to know the source of my inspiration and to watch the cartoons, look at the comics and learn more about them and hopefully share my fascination when they wear and display my work,” she explains.
Tracey’s exciting and complex Fight Cloud bowl is one of the perks from her campaign. Cartoon characters tangle inside the bowl while on the outside, large versions of their features become abstract art.
I don’t know how PCD overlooked Polyflavour and thanks to a hint from reader Jody Newman, she’s now on board. Tracey’s videos show her making canes, she’s got an Etsy shop and a Facebook page to acquaint you with her comical art.
Polka dots are fashionable and classic…and very hard to make in polymer. I’m putting the finishing touches on tonight’s Craftcast class where you’ll learn how to make dots in your own palette and use them in a variety of ways. Then there are extruded tubes that become birch branches or curvy tubular accents…and so many other ideas!
If squeezing polymer out of a tube is a mystery to you, join us for some fascinating answers.
Tomorrow I’ll be less frenzied and it will be back to PCD business as usual.
