North Carolina’s Julie Eakes brought sand and pantyhose to the Virginia retreat to experiment with rounded polymer forms like this one that has a 4″ diameter.
It’s all polymer and built on a shape filled with sand that is removed after curing.
Julie continued her dark, curving theme on gently rounded squares for the bowl swap.
With several successful vases and one blowout (hot sand needs to cool slowly before handling), Julie was hooked on vessels. Watch for more on Instagram and Facebook.
France’s Odile Marchais uses techniques she learned from Croatia’s Nikolina Otrzan to make these stylized springy brooches. Nik teaches a surprisingly simple way to fill unusual shapes with air, keeping them light yet strong.
The childlike design of spring Odile’s flowers reminds us of the spring flowers we’re forcing to bloom at this time of year.
In Nikolina’s most recent post, she shows how to make use of those “inchies” that lots of us have collected from various classes and events. She picks out a few favorites and gathers them into a great looking pin.
This hollow 5″ tall raku-looking vessel is completely polymer. This is one of my new organic forms that don’t need glass or metal or even paper to hold a shape.
I didn’t quite like the pan pastel colors that I applied before baking so I kept adding surface treatments.
Crackle medium added a tactile surface and oil paint gave it an aged finish. A dash of gilders paste made this lumpy, organic shape glow.
You will laugh at the form that this pot was built on. Let’s just say that you shouldn’t throw your pantyhose away just yet. More pictures on this weekend’s StudioMojo.
We’re thinking of PCD readers affected by Hurricane Harvey, hoping that you’re safe.
Carol Simmons and Rebecca Watkins are sharing the fruits of their recent collaborative work with you!
Carol wanted to experiment with big polymer beads and Rebecca wanted them lightweight and textured. Rebecca came up with an ingenious solution to make them hollow. Paper!
Since paper’s burning point is 451° Fahrenheit, it works as an armature for polymer. Rebecca researched and redrew various shape templates, printed them onto cardstock, cut them out, and taped each shape together. The constructed forms were covered with a thin layer of polymer (see the black forms in this picture) and baked.
Carol and Rebecca covered the baked forms with slices of kaleidoscope canes. Rebecca incised deep lines into Carol’s densely patterned canes. They tried a variety of methods – deeply or lightly textured, highlighted with dark powder (see Rebecca’s project in Polymer Clay Global Perspectives) or not, covered in sheets of pattern or with small sections. Each test bead was then rebaked.
Here are her shape files for you to download free, print and play with. “They are free because I did not invent geometry!” says Rebecca. Still, it was generous of the duo to share their secrets. Thanks to them we have another great way to create hollow forms with polymer.
Winnie Poh comes to us from Moscow (I think). These clever folded beads are cutout and stamped stars whose points are folded up on themselves.
Her site is chock full of ideas that are well executed with a very Russian feel. Hair ornaments and smoothly finished hollow pendants are mixed with video game and cartoon figures.
Let’s hope there’s a Russian translator among you who can fill in the blanks about this young artist.
Hollow beads are all the rage this year. At last week’s conference my tablemate Libby Mills applied her own distinct style by carving and doodling on the hollow forms with Prismacolor pencils followed by a wash of black acrylic.
She paired the beads with wire wraps that echoed the scribbled look. You may notice that scribbling has been a theme of Libby’s for years. This new design may push her back into the studio to play again.
Seth Savarick doesn’t believe in small as you can see from his latest polymer necklace at the left and the bangles he inspires in his workshops (see Friday’s post). The wearers of his creations must be prepared for conversation.
Alexis Pier (of Pier and Penina) has also shifted her interest to making polymer clay “objet d’art”.
The small sculptures below and the 4″x10″ tile at the left show her first steps toward larger wall pieces and more sizeable sculptures.
Air-filled closed shapes build on a technique introduced by Pier Voulkos in 1997 with refinements and new style added more recently by Jeff Dever and others.
Note: I’ll try to pry Carol Simmons’ cane reducing secrets out of her before I leave at the end of the week.
