I’ve almost forgotten how to post! But really, who can miss Valentine’s Day?
Christi Friesen has been tucking these languorous beauties in orders all month. Her hearts are encrusted with flowers and pearls and bits of love from Hawaii. They have a perfect beachy buzz.
Check out all her fun events and online mischief.
When Ron Lehocky asked me several years ago who made this dotted square pin that I was wearing, I replied confidently, “Dayle Doroshow.” He corrected me. “I made that,” he said. This is a Ron Lehocky collector’s item!
Long ago and far away when Ron first started dipping into polymer, he made pins that weren’t heart-shaped and weren’t made from others’ scraps. That was 51,000 hearts ago! Hard to believe he’s raised that much for The Kids’ Center for Pediatric Therapies!
Ron pointed me to his 2015 tutorial on PCD that shows how to turn a heart into a Christmas tree. That was from when he had made a mere 30,000 hearts.
Oh, and Dayle Doroshow? She’s lived and taught in France (and Florida) for the past twenty years. And now she’s written a book about her art and life there. Time flies!
France’s Chifonie sprinkles tiny red hearts over all her animal friends.
Underneath their simple shapes and endearing expressions are layers of luscious colors, bits of cane, swirls of stripes, and shimmering crackled metallics.
It’s an endearing combination of fancy and plain, whimsical and serious. Always dotted with a bright red indication of where Chifonie’s heart lies.
Where does your heart show up in your work? We’ll be examining that in Saturday’s edition of StudioMojo. Sign up today!
France’s Laurence Pelee (Deco_laure) makes delightfully complicated hearts with a Mexican twist. They’re beaded and layered with wings and flowers and trinkets on shapes that swerve slightly.
Laure uses all her tricks on these small brooches – canes, mokume gane, stencils, paints, beads. It’s all there in lively and energetic colors.
UK’s Helen Cruickshank shows her love of cats in this project for a Valentine’s Day fundraiser (Colchester Caring for Our Cats Fundraising). She created one design of a cat in a heart shape and repeated it using a variety of veneers and canes.
Her way of repeating designs is perfect for those of us who quickly tire of making the same thing again and again. February 1 is Groundhog Day you know (the movie popped into my head).
Ever the clever girl, Helen has just published her second book, Polymer Clay for All Seasons, which contains a menagerie of 13 delightfully varied projects.
When Katie Way (BullsEyeStudioArt) moved from Alaska to Oklahoma to Texas she had to rethink lots of things. Downsizing, city life, climate change.
It was a natural time to shift her artwork too. This year’s valentines have a distinctly fresh look. Some city vibes, updated shapes, grunge, new colors, links.
These big changes are coming from her tiny home studio. She shares photos that will appeal to the gypsy artist that lives in a little corner of our hearts.
Hey, wanna see how other polymer artists live and work? We’ll poke our noses into messy back rooms and sleek studios in Saturday’s StudioMojo. Wanna peek?
Make three small curvy blends (white to orangy pink, orangy pink to darker pink, pink to nearly purple) then wrap them in thin black and pinch them so they bend around each other. There’s something special about these conjoined hearts from Lindsey of VividClay.
If you’ve seen Lindsey’s paradox cane tutorial on YouTube you know that she has a knack for manipulating blends in eye-catching ways. These hearts entwine in similar mesmerizing ways.
What? We haven’t crowed about Kentucky’s Ron Lehocky for ages! This Halloween Heart feature will fix that!
Here are some of Ron’s latest with two of my favorite ingredients…dots (of course) and canes from Nebraska’s Ivy Niles (ikandyclay).
Every bone is incredibly detailed. To achieve such precision Ivy probably reduced the parts in sections. Can’t you imagine her humming,”…the hip bone’s connected to the thigh bone.. ” as she reduced and assembled these tiny, tiny guys? (She still has a few on her Etsy site!)
Ron has recently collaborated with super-caners Jon Anderson and Jayne Dwyer for some other knock-your-socks-off hearts too. And they’re all for the Kids.
We’ll start the party this Saturday with more goblins and ghoulies and candy in Saturday’s StudioMojo. No costumes required. Sign up here.
Illinois’ Linda Webb (CreeksideStudio) reminds us that it’s Pride Month with this pile of rainbow hearts.
June 2021 marks the 51st anniversary — a time when millions of people come together in support of the LGBTQ community.
Linda uses her signature mosaic style to build all sorts of rainbows and you may appreciate her explanation of the significance of each colorway on her Etsy site.
48,283 – That’s the number of hearts that Ron Lehocky has created for his Kids Project since 2005. Year by year he moved the goalposts and predicts he’ll crack 50,000 in 2021. Each heart raises $10.
When Ron put out the word, scraps from artists far and wide started arriving. He transforms scrap into heart brooches. This scrap is from Canada’s Susan Andrews. Ron rolled, twisted, and textured her cane end into all these variations.
“I certainly have enough “remnants” from generous and supportive fellow polymer artists to help me reach the goal,” Ron says. Happy Valentines Day to our King of Hearts.
“And the 500?” you ask? This Saturday’s StudioMojo is my 500th edition of the weekend insider’s newsletter. Hard to believe where one step after another will get you! I’m turning 500! Come celebrate with your StudioMojo friends.
