Balanced bowl and a TP trick

Boston’s Betsy Baker was pushing hard to get ready for the St. Paul ACC show last week. She gave herself a little diversion from jewelry production to make a series of ring bowls which share the same grunge-meets-elegant aesthetic. The copper colored lining on this one plays nicely against the concrete-like exterior.

If you look at Betsy’s Instagram, you can see how she loads her post earrings into the oven. Wouldn’t you guess that those are toilet paper rolls that have been flattened and pierced with holes for the posts?

Her improvised holder allows her to fire the front of the earrings and hold them upright so that any back details are baked at the same time. When you’re preparing for shows, every time-saving trick helps.

A polymer builder

Croatia’s Nikolina Otrzan loads her shapes with rough textures and subtle colors. These square earrings are an outgrowth of her boxes, tubes and cubes series. Short sections of dark tubes line up into squares.

Seems very simple but Nik goes to great lengths to construct her pieces, paying attention every detail. Now that she’s worked out her own tricks for hollow forms, she’s expanding the jewelry she makes from them.

A walk through her Flickr site or Instagram shows you how her designs are evolving. Her tutorials contain scads of photos that explain every step. She offers a handful of instructions on Etsy and classes on CraftArtEdu. Few polymer artists are as meticulous about how their work is built as Nikolina.

Reminders of spring

Lynne Ann Schwarzenberg reminds us how she artfully arranges cane slices into the most interesting earrings.

With her stash of beautiful tiny canes she makes turning them into layered designs look easy. See a few more versions on Facebook and more of her signature work on Pinterest and Instagram.

Reminders of spring and Lynne. She thought we might have forgotten her. Not a chance!

Prickly polymer

One more edgy post to round out PCDaily’s week. Lindsay Locatelli (WazoDesigns) shifted into production mode and cranked out 14 pairs of these spiky dangles one evening.

Maybe it’s her background in wood that makes her unafraid of chopping, carving and prickly bits. There’s raw energy in the pieces on her Instagram and Artful Home sites. Her audience loves the roughness.

These pieces remind me of the pointy spring shoots bravely poking through this weekend’s snow. Join us on StudioMojo for more budding news.

The nudge to improve

These mokume gane polymer earrings from Massachusetts’ Liz Hinckley Stefano caught my eye. The colors and patterns come together for a gorgeous mix of retro and modern.

Liz is off to a stellar start making weekly earrings throughout 2017 for the PCClayChallenge organized by Katie Oskin.

It’s not too late to jump on board. Commit to make whatever shape or form strikes your fancy and create as often as you can handle.

Read Cate van Alphen’s post about how she finished 18 of 52 vessels she intended to complete in a 2016 group. She felt she succeeded on a variety of levels. See why.

You’ll find a few more links to Liz on Pinterest and her site. This isn’t the first time she has risen to a challenge! If group activities energize you and commitments nudge you to improve, join one.

Superficial polymer

Do Shannon Tabor’s blanks appeal to you? Are you drawn to the possibilities of polymer as a vehicle for inks, paints, pencils, markers, chalks, screens, stamps and more?

If so, you’re in good company. That’s how the polymer crowd rolled this year. The winter edition of The Polymer Arts magazine brings you more about the wealth of surface treatments that have popped up. The articles all focus “On the Surface” and you’re sure to find a method that suits your style.

Here Shannon (Charleston Clay) colors and scuffs her white bases into Orbit earrings which were inspired by astronaut and Ohio hero John Glenn. See more of Shannon’s inspired creations on Instagram and Facebook and this interview plus tutorial on Paint/Draw/Blend.

Light leafed earrings

I don’t know about you, but I could use a break from the snow and the red and green holiday frenzy. It’s warmer more laid back in Melbourne, AU, where Peaches and Keen make their graphic, translucent, gold-leafed earrings.

I’m not even sure that their thin “plastic” earrings are made from polymer. But they could/should/might be and that’s good enough for me today.

If you need a jolt of color and a hit of crisp design, stroll through their Instagram, Facebook, and website.

Polymer under the surface

These wintery leaves from Germany’s Vera Kleist-Thom rely on extruded polymer strings for their color. The oblique cuts at the edges reveal Vera’s palette of dark reds and blues highlighted with a dash of bright yellow. Like the leaves at our feet, seemly simple leaf earrings are more fascinating upon examination.

Look at her Flickr pages and you’ll see that cut, gouged and sanded extrusions figure prominently in all Vera’s experiments. She likes to reveal what’s under the surface. Look on Etsy and Facebook too.

Cut it out

Yes, you could cut this shape out by hand, slowly, carefully, patiently in polymer. But once you see what a die-cutting machine will do, you may reconsider. Join me on Saturday at Craftcast to see what’s happening in the world of die-cutting.

Autumn leaves

These tiny maple leaf earrings by Michigan’s Sue Screws called to me every time I walked by this display during my weekend class at Creative Journey Studio in Georgia.

Sue made these delicate cutouts for a number of types of trees in fall colors with intricate veining and realistic colors. I couldn’t resist wearing these on my long drive back to Ohio.

You can enjoy a few more photos from the weekend here and here. (Sue is hard to find on ine, try Facebook.) Back to our regular schedule tomorrow.

Beyond either/or

Genevieve Williamson reminds us to think beyond “drop” or “dangle”. We can choose “drop” and “dangle”.

Are there other choices we’re overlooking? How are you narrowing your options?

Instagram may be the best place to see how Genevieve thinks through her series. Learn more on her site, Facebook and Pinterest.

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