Polymer Clay Daily

Pieced polymer

Israel’s Angela Bahrenholtz likes to work in small bright pieces. Sometimes she uses little sections to build polymer quilts, recently she moved to even smaller micromosaics as in this Autumn pendant.

Her 12″ square all-polymer quilt took second place in the Israeli Polymer Clay Guild’s contest this summer.

Even Angela’s faux tweed cane is made up of little pieces of other polymer scrap. I tried her tweed tutorial and loved the pixelated results.

Knit, crochet, quilt and more – if there’s a fabric technique that can be simulated in polymer, you’ll find it in Angela’s Flickr pages.

Faux beach glass

Wendy Malinow refined and reworked the polymer sea glass idea we tinkered with together at the beginning of the summer. This Oregon coast artist can’t pass up making polymer into faux beach finds.

We were riffing on Seth Savarick’s faux glass idea that will be shown in a new book due out next spring.

Wendy adds a bit of fantasy sealife to her version and weaves her shards and coral into a necklace of delicate blue greens. Click on the image to get a bit better idea of the color close up.

The clasp on the piece blends beautifully into this end of season design.

Fauopal

Liz Hall and Randee Ketzel are leading a resurgence of polymer artists taking another run at making a believable opal. Their techniques are coming mighty close to fooling the eye and driving the rest of us crazy figuring out how they do it.

Liz (left) is partial to boulder and Yowah Opals. She says, “I make the initial shape with iridescent mediums embedded into many different layers and types of polymers to get these results. I finish these faux opals by coating them with resin then sanding and buffing them on the wheel.”

Randee prefers hers embedded in fossilized limestone with traces of primeval seas. They’re both obsessed with simulating opal perfectly in polymer.

Pieced polymer 2

I was on Gera Scott Chandler’s wavelength last week as I prepared a big sheet of polymer for inlay into a walnut bowl turned by my husband. Gera imagines stained glass while I gravitate to quilts and textiles. We took two very different paths and both ended up with an efficient way to cover a lot of ground.

I prepared enough polymer to have inlay for two bowls from one sheet. My starting point is a patchwork of solid polymer colors at random angles. These backgrounds are loaded up with small cane slices, faux stitching, and pieces of hex glitter.

The strips of pattern cut from the sheet are layed into the bowl, textured and fired with a heat gun.

Pieced polymer

Gera Scott Chandler shows her “starter sheet” of polymer that ends up covering a series of her fusion bangles.

The luminous sheet is a sandwich of polymer, foils, translucent clay and alcohol inks. Loose graphic designs are stamped and scored into the clay.

The big sheet is cut into pieces which are fitted and smoothed over bangle bases.

The black polymer bases underneath make the overlay glow like faux stained glass. Socket joints stretch and close easily over the elastic that holds them together.

A starter sheet is an efficient way to produce a series of companion pieces. It helps, of course, to begin with a signature palette and lots of experience with foils and inks. You’ll see what I mean when you study the colors in Gera’s Flickr site.

Faux cloisonne

Sabine Spiesser’s Dare to Dream of Timeless Opulence was named the winner of the Aussiepolyclayers 2011 Competition and featured on the Voila site. Watch parts float in the shimmering cloisonne that you can see more closely here.

Sabine was born in Angola and now lives in Melbourne. A former potter and self-taught digital artist, she brings the layering and transparency processes that are familiar on the computer to her meticulous faux cloisonne polymer pieces.

Sabine credits Eugenia Topina with teaching her the technique which she has mastered and expanded. You can read more about the technique and its development here.

Polymer amulets

Jen Parrish makes polymer relics in the attic studio of a purple Victorian home stuffed with tattered antiques, pampered cats and dogs and a poet husband.

She creates for museums, the entertainment industry and for daydreaming romantics. Her glass vessel amulets are framed with textured, antiqued polymer then paired with vintage beads. The glass vial can hold wishes and other precious items. It’s topped with a tiny cork. History meets glamor in these recent magazine article photos.

Jen includes everything from tiaras to triptychs in her line of ornate enchanted polymer pretties. Would a little romance soften the beginning of your week? Look at Jen’s FB page, Etsy shop and blog.

Button vignettes

These buttons from Vancouver’s Joan Tayler take polymer pebbles to a whole new level. On each of them one red ladybug crawls across a domed faux granite base that’s been partially obscured by slices of leaves and flowers. Picture a thickly knitted wool cardigan finished with these bright scenes.

Leaves and ladybugs were Joan’s theme for the previous week. And her individually sculpted old owl buttons from week 29 will make you smile. She has an eye for woodland vignettes that delight. You can track the week-by-week progress on her button project here.

Faux bohemian batik

This Bohemian Nouveau mixed media wall piece by Heather Campbell leads us down her unusual polymer path. She tends toward large, ornate mixed media pieces that tell fanciful stories.

Heather says, “I am drawn to the wandering nontraditional nature of the Bohemian, which is evident in the shapes and layers of color and the intermingling of techniques. I am captivated by the beautiful flowing scrolls, floral motifs and distinct design elements of the Art Nouveau era. Together they seem to merge into a style and feeling that reflect my own life experience.”

The background on this piece is done with a faux batik polymer technique that Heather details in an article that was published in the July issue of Art Jewelry Magazine. You can download the template (shown at the right) for Heather’s sample batik from the magazine’s website.

Use jump rings to go ethnic

Svetlana Gracheva from Donetsk, Ukraine embeds what look to be jump rings into her faux ethnic polymer beads with a stunningly realistic effect. The jump rings become bezels for small imitation turquoise and coral pieces.

Other metal is sandwiched in the middle of faux amber and turquoise beads. You can see examples of the techniques in her Lhasa and Nagrang Tibetan-style necklaces pictured here.

On her Tibetan bead class description page, Svetlana offers pictures (scroll down her page) that show how she performs her sleight of hand. In that class she finishes the beads with mosaic inlays. What a treat for those of us searching for new faux fun.