Greece’s Katerina Strouggari (@mepolymeraki) zigs and zags her polymer earrings, tucking in balls of clay for an imitative soutache design.
She starts with one long strip of black and white, adding alternating colors of balls between each turn.
Soutache is the narrow braid embroidery associated with military and band uniforms.
See how she creates the same effect on pendants on Facebook
Texas’ Deb Hart shows the start of these petroglyphs on Instagram but how she arrives at the small squares with caned petroglyph images in the middle is still baffling.
They are built into an extruded string outline. Wow, that looks labor-intensive. She’s releasing more photos of her progress on the new inlays as she goes.
Here, she shows a Zuni Bear petroglyph and a coiled snake. Maybe she’s gearing up for a tutorial about her newly developed methods.
See an overview of Deb’s Southwest and Native American-inspired sculptures and jewelry on Flickr.
An appealing pile of what looks like polymer rocks from Russia’s Anna Bragina (Braga) becomes even more captivating when arranged into a necklace.
The stones could have been sculpted from the same block of granite.
Some of her smooth shapes are available as cutters from the GF Art Store on Etsy. See what other pieces she makes with these graceful shapes on her Instagram and Facebook.
In her latest batch of Flickr photos, Kathrin Neumaier gives us an update on her studies in coaxing liquid polymer to behave like glass.
This series appears to be solid. She says in her captions that she’s using liquid Fimo. Kathrin has also mastered using Cernit and other materials in her quest to unlock the secrets of how to imitate glass with polymer.
Do a search on PCD and you’ll see that we’ve been curious about Kathrin’s methods for years.Can you figure it out?
Anna Nel’s hollow beads look remarkably like lampwork. It’s Friday so you have the weekend to sit and study her beads and the cane they came from.
She uses some ingenious combination of mokume gane and Skinner blended bulleyes to pull off this sleight of hand. Anna says she was inspired by Arizona’s mountains. She even offers a photo of her luminous palette. Look on Facebook and Instagram.
Come on over and join us on StudioMojo, a Saturday morning in-depth look at the week in polymer. Grab a cup of tea, open your newsletter, and create yourself a wonderful weekend!
Nothing says Valentines Day to me more than old-fashioned conversation hearts. Arizona’s Barb Handy (barbiesbest) makes an exact copy in polymer that’s hard to resist.
They’re perfectly simulated from the chalky colors to the pink ink to the typeface. Her charms are made 1/4″ thick and drilled either vertically or horizontally. Barb has it down perfectly.
Happy Valentines Day!
The stitching marks on Shelley Atwood’s earrings contain echoes of Kanta stitching, embroidery from South Asia that’s quite popular. The red beads on the edge provide a wonderful contrast.
Much of Shelley’s work has a tribal and fabric look that’s both powerful and fashionable. Go to her site and Facebook to get the full effect.
Why a branch on PCD today? Because it’s polymer and over the past year Jana Roberts Benzon has refined and refined her tools and technique for shaving polymer until it looks spiky. It’s remarkably durable.
Like yesterday’s Julie Picarello and her hardware store appropriations, Jana grabbed tools from a nail tech’s drawer for her new trick.
This is just one of the goodies from Jana’s Nature Walk workshop scheduled for March 17 and 18 in Texas. Taking classes from artists who have already done the laborious research saves you oodles of time and allows you to daydream about how you could integrate their research into your own style.
Israel’s Angela Bahrenholz has all her ways of simulating fabrics and combined them into three polymer wall quilts, each a 3″ square. Scrap polymer becomes scrap quilts.
Her methods are quite addictive, cutting and stacking repeatedly. You use up your scrap and precision isn’t much of an issue. A win-win in my estimation. The results bring the clay back to life. Examine all her pieced polymer quilts and other art on Flickr. See her tutorials and finished works on Etsy.
Even if you never learned to knit, Italy’s Leila Bidler demonstrates how you can simulate the look. She extrudes strings of polymer in shades of blue, twists them and lines them up…without dropping a stitch!
A second layer of stitching every inch or so gives the swatch the look of a fancier pattern and more complex knitting.
On Leila’s Instagram page she turns these faux knits into cozy cuffs and finishes them with a faux wood button for a wintry accessory.
A snowy day is a perfect time to check out this season’s crop of faux knit ideas. Every year there’s some new twist. PCD’s all-time favorites are still Juliya Laukhina’s from 2010.
If you’re looking for more fun behind-the-scenes tidbits, come on over to StudioMojo where we indulge in deep polymer chats every Saturday morning.
