Polymer Clay Daily

Santa Gonk Gnomes

Dani Kirova wears a Santa gnome on her ears on PolymerClayDaily.com

Let’s kick off the holidays with these cheeky earrings from UK’s Dani Kirova (temptedbyartjewelry).

We’ve been awfully restrained up to now and Dani’s Santa Gonk Gnome helps us begin to put all the 2020 nonsense in the rearview mirror.

At StudioMojo we’ll be looking at how the holidays will play out with virtual festivals and online sales. Handmade gifts, personalized presents are will be particularly important this year as our priorities shift and we chill in place for the holidays. 

We’ll look at what polymer elves are making for Santa season. Need a little shove to shift your attitude? Join us. 

Warped and wrinkled polymer

BobbiMadeThis earrings are wrinkled and warped on PolymerClayDaily

Extruded, wrinkled, quirky, post earrings!  What’s not to love about these warped and wrinkled links from North Carolina’s BobbiMadeThis?

BobbiMadeThis earrings are wrinkled and warped on PolymerClayDaily

Several sympatico polymer artists have teamed up for a giveaway and other clever marketing ploys.

Simple, proud, in-your-face is their theme. Can you get with that? Follow their links down a very hip rabbit hole.

Textile tones in polymer

Liz Stefano blends hieroglyphs with crackle on PolymerClayDaily.com

Massachusetts’ Liz Stephano (Lizardlooks) layers Egyptian imagery and crackled surfaces on these contemporary shapes.

My head started rummaging through my closet, picturing them with winter jackets.

You probably want to know how she made them but I have no idea. Silkscreen? Transfer? Enjoy the mystery and the rich ancient imagery in fabric-like tones.

Liz moved from the west coast to Cape Cod to get back in touch with color.

Scraps of Autumn

Liga Valge combines autumn colors on PolymerClayDaily.com

Before the leaves fall and the lawn turns white with frost, let’s breathe in some autumn colors from Ireland’s Liga Valge. Sometimes scraps tell a story of their own.

Halloween will collide with voting this week. A real mishmash. It’s hard to focus. Let me know if you create something inspired.

Jumping through hoops

Cynthia Tinapple jumps through hoops on PolymerClayDaily
Cynthia Tinapple jumps through hoops on PolymerClayDaily

Extruding is my studio warm-up exercise. Polymer hoop earrings are selling like hotcakes and look easy enough. Since I’ve been peddling red, white, and blue all week, the palette was settled. I was off to try out hoops.

Lynda Gilcher’s repeat angle wedge extruder disks are perfect for striped canes. She does the math and each disk indicates how many you’ll need to make a complete circle. I assembled my 12 extruded wedge strips of color into a circle.

Insert the resulting cane back into the extruder to produce any shape you want. For the hoops, I extruded the cane through Lynda’s Arches #3 disk. Voila! Hoops!

The messy scrap is the beginning of a brooch (see Jana Roberts Benzon’s idea here). Something about this textured mess seems apropos of our current red, white, and blue. It needs an element that says 2020.

Did you notice that I slid right into tutorial mode? Friday is my day to scoop up the ideas and products that have floated by and turn them into juicy stuff for StudioMojo. Sometimes it’s a how-to, sometimes it’s a looky-looky. Come on over and see what’s in this week’s grab bag.

Voting booth ear art

Ginnie Parrish's pinwheel earrings go vote on PolymerClayDaily.com

North Carolina’s Ginnie Parrish (BlueFrogClay) gets her patriotism on with a pinwheel version of stars and stripes earrings along with simple mismatched stars. Now doesn’t that make you want to go out and vote?

Ginnie Parrish's pinwheel earrings go vote #polymerclaydaily

I was so inspired that I zipped into my studio to see what I could come up with. But that’s for later in the week. Send PCD photos of what you’ll be wearing to the polls. Here’s Ginny on Etsy.

Screaming cookies

Anakay's biscuits scream on PolymerClayDaily.com

In the hands of France’s Anakay (anakay_fimo) during this spooky season, popular BN cookies take on a more sinister tone. Her polymer versions turn into earrings on her Instagram.

Anakay's biscuits scream on PolymerClayDaily.com

It’s Friday so we’ll slip into the weekend with some spooky sweets. Even the cookies are screaming these days.

In this Saturday’s StudioMojo we’ll bring the screaming down a notch. No hustles, no pushing. You probably have your own little inkling of something new you want to try. Come see the bright ideas you may have missed. 

High voltage color

Little bits of high voltage colors on a slab on PolymerClayDaily.com

We’ve gotten ho-hum about slabs. Make a base, add some bits, press in, cut out. Yeh, yeh.

With high voltage colors and neatly stacked bits in a controlled composition, Australia’s Linzy (graciefaceau) makes us look again. Her site isn’t ready yet and her shop opens this weekend. Now she’s got our attention!

Further exploration shows that the slab is a collaboration. The slab is from Linzy and the colors are from Katherine at Hellorobbo. Recipes for her latest palette go on sale this weekend.

Dive into Monday

I find myself gravitating to bigger and bigger earrings. Seems it’s the upside of these strange times. “Why not?” I ask myself.

These lovelies are from Dallas’ SmallTalkHandmade. The Dive line is her take on a modern-day tassel made entirely of clay. Hard and soft, light, and heavy. The extruded strings hanging from a cutout square call to me. You too?

Camo Couture

Earrings for soldiers from Sherry Shine on PolymerClayDaily.com

Jacksonville, Florida’s Sherry Shine loves mokume gane for its random serendipity. Two of her mokume pieces were award winners in the Fire Mountain Gems’ contest last year. It’s her line of camouflage earrings that caught my eye.

Yes, she’s a proud Air Force veteran! Why not serve fashionably?

Here she is out of uniform on YouTube and Etsy