A discarded 11″ x 27″ cabinet door leaning against the garage wall called to Kathy Koontz (Flowertownoriginals). The door begged for a second chance and Kathy was in a mood to grant it.
She painted the door and scooped up all the scrappy polymer bits lying around.
Stems and leaves grew first. Then the scraps organized themselves into jolly layered blooms.
The playful process made Kathy remember how much fun wall art can be.
It’s been a fruitful week for Ontario’s Seanna Bettencourt (thepolymergarden) as she launches into week 2 of a 33-week challenge. She devoted this week to improve the process. Seanna’s cane-slice petals gently cup the buds.
First came the design and petal making. Assembling was too fiddly and intensive for production. She refined and refined until, like Goldilocks, she got it just right. Here’s the finished product.
Now that February is thawing in this hemisphere, we’re thumbing through garden catalogs and skewing our palettes to pinks, yellows, and greens.
Utah’s Mary Anne Loveless can’t wait. The green sprouts in her garden prompted her to heap flowers on these earrings in her spring collection. Let’s celebrate Spring Fever!
Over at StudioMojo, we’re still harvesting tips from this month’s online conferences and classes. If you’re in the mood tor the best homemade tools and the most clever new designs, hop over to the right column and sign up for Saturday’s newsletter.
Chicago’s Ann Duncan Hlavach brings us an end-of-the-summer flower. She tucks them in her outrageous garden among their more perishable, less flamboyant cousins.
If you need a pleasant diversion (and who doesn’t), take a stroll along Ann’s garden path.
I was about to hang an “out of order” shingle on the blog today. I have 24 swap items that need to get in the mail tomorrow.
Why not let you see my kitchen counter/studio in a frantic mess as I cut out my flowers? A couple of tools I need are in the “real” studio, of course.
It’s a flower theme. These are flowers that will be put on wires/stakes to grace gardens. We try not to be competitive but who are we kidding? I made my own templates from takeout containers. (I seem to have a lot of those.) That’s a story for later.
Twelve more cutouts and I can go to bed. You’re not seeing the finished product. With any luck, I can group them for a shot tomorrow. Yawn! Wish me luck. Procrastinators unite!
Wearable signs of hope, growth, and comfort for all! That’s the tagline that Minnesota’s Chris Baird gives her small brooches made of sweetly colored cane slices.
She likes to stick to geometrics and color these days though she’s had a long career in various media. You’ll want to explore what grows in her polymer garden on Facebook.
Make yourself a sprig of hope and fasten it to your lapel this fine spring Monday.
Utah’s Jana Roberts Benzon can’t stop carving polymer and now she understands why. Jana explains.
This newest mash-up of my carving and murmuration techniques has been rewarding, As I was making these small arrangements I realized that something felt very familiar. For 20 years, I had my own floral design company! Assembling these new little gardens woke up some old muscle memory from my floral work. There it was, ready for service! The body doesn’t forget. Those things we practice lie in wait for later use.
Textiles, illustration, painting, cooking and other crafts we’ve loved can imbue works with our history. What echoes from your past reappear in your designs?
This butterfly bush (more pix here) is a group project from the polymer clay students at the Ohio Reformatory for Women for the Into the Forest exhibit.
The clay came from generous artists who were destashing. (The ORW students are happy to condition old polymer. Let me know if you’re cleaning out and have extra clay.)
They created 27′ of big hole beads that were slipped onto brass rods and inserted into a wooden base made by my husband. The brass rods couldn’t be taken into the facility so we had to visualize the piece and assemble it at home. I’ll take the whole shebang apart to ship it off to Pittsburgh.
Will you be part of this international exhibit? The deadline has been extended to May 1.
You have plenty of time to make your mark on the fanciful forest that Laura Tabakman, Julie Eakes, Emily Squires Levine, Libby Mills and Nancy Travers concoct from your submissions.
The event opens in Pittsburgh in November with a teaser preview on view at Synergy4 in August. Are you tempted to make some beads to cheer up your own garden?
