Texas’ Deb Hart is cooking up a tutorial for her rainbow pixelated cane. Here she’s turned the cane into bangles of extruded tube beads curved to ride comfortably on the wrist.
The edges of the squares in the cane glow and accentuate each color. Look on Facebook and Etsy to see where Deb goes next with her cane tricks.
Something cheery has moved Germany’s Jana Lehmann in a new meandering direction.
Jana extrudes strands of marvelous color and builds modern designs by carefully laying them next to each other.
She adds extremely small dots of color as accents and surrounds the piece with a black and white frame.
The heart is made similarly with flat, graduated ribbons of polymer. These require dexterity and a love of small detail but they exude a joyousness that’s infectious and ready for spring. More on Facebook and Flickr.
My polymer radar did a little shiver when Silvia Ortiz De La Torre’s Mandala earrings popped up on Etsy.
Near the edges, the black shows up and frames the designs. The colors bounce off each other playfully. The hole in the middle offers a reprieve from the intensity of pattern. What a great use of all those bits of extruded (or handmade if you prefer) bits of cane.
California’s Syndee Holt is happily going rogue with this modern pendant made of distressed circles captured by a loose black grid.
Syndee works in threes so you’ll find two more examples of this dot/grid combination on her Instagram.
She has worked for Polyform Products for years developing designs, mixing colors, and trying out products. A good gig, eh? She shares some of her own tutorials and experiments on her blog and there’s a cool extruded coiled bowl post there now if you’re looking for a playful way to start your week.
Mari O’Dell has been dreaming up Japanese-inspired pendants in her Annapolis, Maryland studio/treehouse.
She begins with castings made from segments of antique Japanese kashigata molds. Translucent polymer tinted to look like jadeite is pressed into the molds and cured. The elements are set aside to be assembled into finished pendants.
Mari uses a distinctive way layering on extruded Japanese design elements. Though she has limited strength in her hands, she’s devised clever extruder workarounds.
The piece is then surrounded by a bezel made of thin strips of clay and the entire work is mounted on clay backing. The final touches involve alcohol inks, heat set stamp inks and a final curing.
Follow along with more of her designs and experiments on her Instagram site.
Even if you never learned to knit, Italy’s Leila Bidler demonstrates how you can simulate the look. She extrudes strings of polymer in shades of blue, twists them and lines them up…without dropping a stitch!
A second layer of stitching every inch or so gives the swatch the look of a fancier pattern and more complex knitting.
On Leila’s Instagram page she turns these faux knits into cozy cuffs and finishes them with a faux wood button for a wintry accessory.
A snowy day is a perfect time to check out this season’s crop of faux knit ideas. Every year there’s some new twist. PCD’s all-time favorites are still Juliya Laukhina’s from 2010.
If you’re looking for more fun behind-the-scenes tidbits, come on over to StudioMojo where we indulge in deep polymer chats every Saturday morning.
The Etsy site of Oregon’s Rhonda Walker (walkercrafts) is full of simple pleasures.
She bends strips of extruded polymer to spell a wish or a word, mounts that on a backing and surrounds it with small decorative embellishments.
Accents of paint and/or texture make for a dreamy message that becomes a hanging or a magnet or a dish. What word would you like to be reminded of each day?
It’s true, happiness can sometimes be found in an empty Cheez Whiz jar.
Iowa’s Lynne Rutter Gummert swears that she doesn’t know exactly what she’s doing but what comes out of her extruder shows that she understands more than she admits.
Her colors are Klimty and bright. She mixes and matches a selection of extruded patterns. Slices are applied to a glass form that gets popped into the oven and emerges as a treasured desk accessory.
It’s a no-fail approach and a daily reminder of the her creative super power. Do you have a treasured piece that reminds you of your polymer superpower?
Yesterday we spiraled extrusions around an egg. Today we watch Germany’s Jana Lehmann (Feeliz) as she winds around the centers of her series of Spiral brooches.
The colors blend into each other as the layers build. White dots and black and white accents provide a diversion from the strong colors.
Jana’s debuted a series of graphic dolls that are also decorated with spirals made of subtly blended colors.
You can catch Jana on Facebook and Flickr. Don’t miss the pen/pendants before you go spinning off to your weekend.
And if you’d like an even closer look at what happened in polymer clay art this week, join us over at StudioMojo for the inside scoop in the weekend newsletter.
Two artists have gone tubular for spring. Same thinking with very different outcomes from Austria’s Izabela Nowak and Pennsylvania’s Genevieve Williamson.
Izabela uses slim tubes in graduated purples formed into a 3D necklace. She has been experimenting for months with what she calls her Straw Technique.
Genevieve takes a more minimalist approach with long slender polymer tubes strung into a bright multi-color strand. “Is it too light?” she wonders on Instagram.
PCD will look at several new stringing, assembling, designing developments that have emerged recently. Looks are changing for spring!
