Mari O’Dell offered us sunshine and smiles (and a break from too much seriousness) with her selection of caned and sculpted polymer buttons.
In addition to selling them for sewing onto clothing for fashion accents, Mari ties buttons onto flipflops using waxed linen cord.
Mari’s a big fan of extrusion and most of her 3D elements are made using the dies offered by Polymer Clay Express. Here’s a snapshot of her workspace that’s always adorned with flowers and inspiration.
Ann Dillon pulled out a selection of her latest brooches, simple and elegant design solutions in polymer. Slices of extruded cane patterns cut at different heights stand next to each other on top of layered, textured bases cut into loose shapes. What took the most time, Ann admitted, was deciding which extruded circle patterns looked happy beside each other.
Ann doesn’t often refresh the pictures on her site and Facebook so it’s a treat to rifle through her latest works here in Virginia and give you a peek.
You’d better get crackin’ if you’ve got an Easter basket to fill this weekend.
Need inspiration? Greece’s Klio Tsaliki shows bowls and baskets full of polymer covered eggs in spring colors plus decorated candles.
For some of the eggs she winds a brightly extruded string of polymer round and round for a great effect. Much less messy than dyes! Here’s her Flickr collection.
Other egg-amples should turn up in the boxes below this post.
Polymer artists keep telling me how important play is to their art. In interviews for my book and video chats for StudioMojo, the topic surfaces repeatedly. I squirm a bit because I know I don’t often play in the studio. I fixed that today. No deadlines or pressure! Just fun with clay.
The granny squares that keep popping up online (see Lisa Clarke’s post) intrigued me. I bought this sweater to try to get over my new obsession. Rather than invest in yarn and crochet lessons, I decided to try making the squares in polymer.
An inexpensive online tutorial from Meg Newberg headed me in the right direction. My handy, dandy extruder set up made the process easy.
The patterns improved with each cane as I improvised and experimented. While this afghan bead won’t keep me warm at night, it warms my heart to have played today…and to have shared it with you.
If you thought polymer-covered switchplates were passe, look again at the work of the Anchorage artist at Bull’s Eye Studio.
She canes and carves and layers home decor items as if they were small canvases. We touch light switches every day so why not make them eye-catching?
Her sculptural wallflowers are captivating and she adds utensils and card cases to her line of functional pieces. Bull’s Eye came to Flickr in late December and you’ll want to keep watching her there and on Facebook.
The UK’s Angela Garrod has been named a 2011 polymerista on the European Voila site. Experimenting with making extruded polymer into links, chains and coils, Angela came up with a number of fascinating hollow designs like this Hula Hula necklace.
She says of her Hula Hula necklace, “It is 13″ long and flexes like a snake. Colours range from all shades of greys to violets and magenta and reds. Basically like a giant skinner blend.”
The construction of this dramatic piece is baffling. You can see more of her experiments on her Flickr site. If you ask questions in the comments, maybe Angela will tell us more.
France’s Dorothy Vantorre photographed her step-by-step work on this polymer bearded collie sculpture making the story both funny and educational.
The piece was commissioned by her best friend as a gift for another person. The dog’s thick coat meshes perfectly with Dorothy’s preferred way of working in layers. You can understand Dorothy’s frustration when you look at her big pile of extruded dog hair pieces.
She captures both the look and the spirit of Joy, the dog. She even made a special show box for the gift. Dorothy has sworn off all future dog commissions saying, “I’ve been very pleased to learn that the person who received this gift was very moved! But I want to clarify that the next person who asks me to make a miniature dog will be immediately banned from my contacts.”
Check out Dorothy’s illustrations, cake toppers and sculptures. Her in-progress shots reveal a distinctive style that gravitates to friendly monsters, pink rabbits and hangman earrings. Her biggest trick may be making it all look so easy! Have an easy weekend.
“Paciorky means necklace or beads in Ukrainian,” says Christine Bondar (dzjunka online). Christine’s extruded and carved Amazon River polymer beads offer variations on techniques spread by Vera Kleist and Margit Böhmer.
You’ll see developments in that part of the world on Maria Petkova’s Bulgarian blog that features artists mostly from Eastern Europe as polymer continues to gain popularity.
I’ll be writing a book on global polymer this year and I’m interested in hearing your ideas on what the story should be about. And I’d love to learn about new artists you’ve run into. We’re off and running into 2012!
When Karen Lorene, the owner of Facere Jewelry Art Gallery, was approaching this milestone birthday, she decided to throw a party for herself. She had “…the idea of inviting seventy artists to each pick a year during my lifetime and make a piece of jewelry based on that year. Some pieces have made us double over in laughter and a couple are so moving they make me choke up even to talk about them.”
Follow this link to Celebrating 70. You will recognize several artists from the polymer world and some others may inspire you take the what if road to a new design. I will be featuring many of the non-polymer artists on ornamentalelements.com in the future posts.
guest post by Laurie Prophater
Rather that looking at classic images, this time I searched my family tree for inspiration for a polymer face cane. I never knew my maternal grandmother but I cherished a pin that captured her beauty as a young girl. I decided to recreate that image in my latest mosaic cane.
The cane, which I built from extruded squares in six sections, measured 5″ x 7″ x 1-1/2″. Read more about it in the post, Grand mama, what big eyes you have!, on my blog.
guest post from Julie Eakes
