Polymer Clay Daily

Sobrepena’s covered locket

These days it’s especially good to find reuse/recycle ideas for polymer clay when covered Altoids tins and tea lights have become cliche.

Embellishing old lockets never occured to me until I saw Angeli Sobrepena’s (beadladyangeli) tutorial. She updates her locket with a trendy cupcake image but of course many designs would work.

Angeli suggests gluing the clay onto the locket after baking. A thin layer of liquid polymer applied to the locket before adding the clay might be easier and should bond securely.

I’m pulling out my bag of old jewelry with a renewed sense of the possiblities among my castoffs.

Another thing…

If you’re wondering how crafts and the DIY crowd are faring in this economy, check out Rob Walker’s “Happy Medium” column in the New York Times.

A World of Inspiration

Registration for the July 11-14 International Polymer Clay Guild Retreat in Chicago is now open. Read all about it here and register here (you must join to register).

Disbrain’s color and our craft’s generosity

One lovely end-of-summer shot of color from a Russian site called Disbrain. Translation isn’t helping much and I hope that the picture says it all. NOTE: The link had lots of porn attached. Go to http://disbrain.livejournal.com/1652.html only if you’re virus protected. Thanks to those who alerted me.

Last week’s American Crafts Council salon that’s now online as an audio file got me thinking about crafts and activism.

Polymer clay has been mostly drawn to admirable charitable causes like Bottles of Hope and Breast Cancer Awareness (one of many sites) and Ron Lehockey’s Cerebral Palsy Kids Center support. (Click on his new halloween hearts.)

With our recent conversations about the perils of gold and diamonds, we’re inching closer to making bolder statements about our medium. The deviant art crowd turns away from the pretty and the comfortable to examine another viewpoint. Overall we’re a mostly tame and generous group. That tameness may change.

In his book Buying In, Rob Walker, one of the salon speakers, suggests the following.

Maybe in some sense, the craft idea is a kind of gateway drug to a different way of thinking about material culture – and about consumer behavior that doesn’t merely feel like being part of something larger than ourselves, but really is.

Thanks for listening today. I’m reading and thinking.