Butterfly booth bush

Wanda Shum’s butterfly brooches alight gracefully in her booth on a round potted bush. The spring scene invites shoppers in for a closer look. A Vancouver artist, Wanda is selling her wares at a Toronto wholesale show this week.

It’s easiest to understand how she sketches and builds her butterfly canes by looking at her Facebook photos. You’ll also find her collections of work on Pinterest and Flickr.

Wanda’s colors are hot and her bugs and butterflies add a welcome dash of color on a cold day full of white snow.

2014 Top Five

PCD’s 2014 annual report shows that readers were very curious about hollow polymer forms. Here are your five favorites:

The top attention-getting post for the year was Kim Arden’s lush summer design. She layered translucent circles and leaf shaped slices over a scrap clay striped base.

There is no denying that Kim is an attention-grabber in everything she does. On Facebook she chronicles one outrageous antic after another alongside eye-catching polymer designs. Look at her latest cat cane.

My thanks to every one of the million and a half visitors who stopped by for a look at the latest development in polymer this year. Please visit often in 2015. Happy New Year!

Polymer sliced for the holidays

The snow outside had me looking for holiday designs. I got as far as these beads from Patricia Beuting. They fit the bill. Ethnic meets bohemian meets Christmas.

Patricia’s Pinterest bohemian board will show you that in her art she dreams of Africa, Morocco, and exotic places beyond the Netherlands where she teaches primary school.

For her second festive necklace, Patricia cut old canes into thick slices with a ripple blade for an entirely different effect from the patterns. (Here’s Sculpey’s explanation.)

The cross-cut slices expose layers of colors that are curled around to make big hole beads accented with a few solid rounds.

Get better acquainted with Patricia on Facebook and on Flickr.

Blurry polymer

No need to wipe your screen or clean your glasses. It’s not you. Polymer has gotten blurry.

There’s Wendy Jorre de St Jorre and her Hedges cane that’s a pointellist’s rendition of Australian trees and bushes, the 45th cane in her weekly series. This one started at 4 inches square.

Read the excellent interview on Blue Bottle Tree and you’ll understand her intensity. Wendy’s cane designs have become more impressionistic as they’ve gotten more complex. Prepare to be awed by her canes on Flickr, Pinterest and Facebook.

Then the UK’s Cate van Alphen (Fulgorine) put out what she’s calling her Spectrum beads with vibrant colors that move like an oil slick. They’re made with Fimo’s True Colors. The first batch was intriguing and successive offerings are more mystifying. Look at Flickr and Facebook.

Used to be we wanted crisp edges on our polymer designs and now we’ve gone all soft and blurry. Figuring out how is going to be fun.

Polymer poultry

You may see a teapot where Layl McDill sees a fanciful chicken. It flew out of her studio as soon as it was finished.

Layl layers slices from her brightly patterned canes onto vases, pitchers, teapots and more. She piles on the color (see the in-process shot below), hoping to catch the viewer’s eye and inspire wonder.

In this issue of The Polymer Arts, Layl is one of four featured artists who approach polymer with whimsey and humor.

Layl adds to her site regularly and puts her most recent work on her Facebook page.

Mountain polymer

Portland’s Laurel Swetnam has a website that I missed and her work has surged forward. It’s a treat to see how old friends have changed. Browse and enjoy.

Here are the mountain flowers that she had coming out of the oven today. They’re meant to be sewn onto a fat fabric cord. An inspiring environment can lead you in new directions.

Cats, kids and 27,000 hearts

Cats, kids and hearts – this winning combination has vaulted Ron Lehocky over the 27,000 mark in his polymer project that benefits the Kids Center.

Ron’s efforts have been assisted by artists who send him their unused canes, teachers who gladly show him their tricks, and collaborators who use his hearts in their work.

Leslie Blackford showed Ron how to transfer images with water and use colored pencils to bring life to the eyes of these cats before the images were transferred.

Jimmie Boatwright purchased a heart at Creative Journey Studios and used it as the centerpiece of the beaded necklace shown here.

You may select hearts from Ron’s latest collection of pins made from upcycled donated canes. These will be on sale at the IPCA retreat in Columbus, Ohio this month. If you donated clay, your patterns could reappear on a heart that will help Ron to his next big number.

Autumn impulses

Slovenia’s Klavdija Kurent already feels fall in the air. She has a head full of new ideas and a studio full of supplies. She rummaged around in her boxes of unfinished pieces and cane remnants to create these two new pieces.

For the links she tried a new version of her liquid Kato Go with the Flow technique. Then she made use of favorite cane pattern leftovers for a new series of urban tribal necklaces.

See more of her creations for autumn on Flickr, Pinterest and Facebook. Do you get inspired when the seasons change? What is calling to you this fall?

Striped surprises

Neat and tidy stripes from Israel’s Vicka Bahana start the week. She leaves a segment of contrasting base bead peeking out from under the striped cane slices.

With just that slight surprise, an otherwise plain bead gets a whole new outlook.

Her Bengal bracelet gains a sophisticated touch from the curved corner beads with their shiny end caps.

Vicka sells her work on Etsy and Marmelada. You can find her on Facebook too.

Could your work benefit from a slight change or a hint of surprise?

Bursting beads

My eyes skitter over the pictures online as I emerge from my vacation fog. I don’t know when I’ll catch up and settle into a routine.

The photos that broke through the fog today are very small delights. Eriko Page’s beads are sweet and succulent. This California artist was trained in Japan and you can feel the influence.

Instead of carefully covering a base bead and hiding it under cane slices, she arranges luscious petals around a solid color bud, making her beads look like exploding blossoms in a polymer garden.

Eriko’s sleight of hand gives the beads a distinctive look that you can enjoy here. Here’s an interview with her from FireMountainGems that tells you more.

Note: In yesterday’s post I missed mentioning Claire Maunsell’s class at Gallery Freisleben…there are a few spots left for you lucky ones.

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