Mixed media village

Barcelona’s Fabi Ajates has cooked up a mixed media house-building class. This style is her Arabian Nights version which is 24″ by 14″. Made in one piece, the background is painted and then trimmed with polymer, textures and trinkets.

Knobs and hooks used in the design make the wall piece double as a handy hanger for jewelry or keys.

Fabi admits that making these cottages is addicting. “I love the free form of the houses which are in various sizes and somewhat deformed. This gives a the row a cheerful grace. Constructing them becomes a relaxing exercise.” She’ll be teaching the class in Madrid in late January.

See more examples and styles on her site, on Flickr and on Facebook.

Stencils and polymer

Watching how Laurie Mika applies stencils to polymer is mesmerizing. Even if your style is miles away from Laurie’s layered, collaged, jewel-encrusted shrines, you may find yourself considering how it would be to lavish color and pattern with such abandon. Or maybe just add pattern in a new way.

Truth is, stencils are a departure for Laurie too and she shares her first efforts. She’s a guest artist on Stencil Girl Talk and she shows a little step-by-step on their site. It’s an Indian-inspired mandala with mirrors and recycled glitz. The stencils are rolled into the clay to create an embossed pattern that’s later enhanced with paints.

Laurie used three of Stencil Girl’s patterns and she plans to add her designs to their line in 2015. Here she is on Facebook.

Mixed media melange

There’s nothing like reading about snowy Vermont to get you primed for the season–unless it’s an article about Celie Fago in snowy Vermont.

The online issue of Woodstock Magazine is free. Flip to page 54 and you’ll see Celie in her studio teaching a class how to make one of her polymer bangles that’s loaded with rings of stone and beaded wires.

The bracelet jangles with a collection of circles made from precious metal clays.

Celie mixes her media and I cheer when I find polymer holding its own in her rich melange of metals, beads and found objects. Browse her Etsy store, her blog and her Facebook page.

Gifts outside the box

Angie Wiggins wanted to think ouside the box as she considered making gift items this season.

Her business card holders are sure to be a hit and on Facebook she shared a photo of the wood block she drapes decorated clay sheets over to form her cheery desktop artworks. The bright bulbous feet give the card holders height and add to the party.

Starting out as a weaver, Angie has become well known for her paper bowls onto which she adds bright beads and small bits of polymer. She considers herself a mixed media artist, a chicken farmer and a garden grower.

You can see what inspires Angie on Pinterest and catch more of her work on Facebook. Angie has a strong and fearless sense of color that infuses all her designs with excitement.

Banner polymer

Laurie Mika provides us with a heraldic banner to start our festive Thanksgiving week. Historically, people displayed their coat of arms and other designs to identify and celebrate the family. This banner is a promo for her classes at the Tucson Art Retreat In the Desert (scroll down to her February 5 class).

Usually Laurie uses her techniques on polymer for shrines or jewelry. In this class she’ll show how the same stamp, paint, collage, embed, layer, transfer methods combine into a mixed-media mosaic that can be used to make banners and other artworks. The banner becomes the vehicle for a modern family narrative.

Laurie is just back from her Day of the Dead workshop in Mexico that you can read about on her blog. You’ll find more of her story on Pinterest and Facebook.

Homeland polymer

Madrid’s Sona Grigoryan has been experimenting with strips of newspaper coiled to make forms. Here she shapes the paper coils into a shallow round vessel.

She tops the paper bowl with ribbons of polymer wound into a traditional design that becomes a lid.

Memories of her homeland are never far from her thoughts and historic Armenian designs often appear in Sona’s works. Here polymer is braided and curled into a lovely pattern that is then textured and antiqued to look ancient.

“I’m a free artist,” she says. “I don’t live a single day without making beautiful things or thinking about them.”

Her growing body of work is cataloged on Flickr and she posts regularly to Facebook.

Polymer cut ups

Beauty will save the world. – Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Austria’s Izabela Nowak posted this quote on her site and she takes it seriously. She mixes polymer with juice boxes and milk cartons as she navigates her way to beauty in recycling. Upcyling humble materials is part of her most recent Cut Up pieces.

A stroll through her Flickr site shows how she’s moved from spiraled up strips of polymer (her Gilese pieces) to intricate folded shapes (Into the Fold) and then to Cut up assemblages.

She has found that most manipulations that can be done with paper can also be done with polymer and she has developed classes and workshops for teaching her methods. Ultimately she combines the two media. Her latest creations appear on her Facebook page.

Her colors are bright and her love of geometry comes through strongly as she bends, cuts and folds basic shapes into beauty.

Polymer tell-all

Israel’s Iris Mishly has been on the computer for months learning to give her website a makeover. She’s a do-it-yourself, recycle kinda gal.

You may have guessed that the secret ingredient in her trendy DiscChic line involves a recycled computer part.

Today she’s posted a tell-all video that will have you scouring through the cords and adapters in your computer junk drawer in search of these parts that turn into easy bezels for polymer.

Iris’ 30 free tutorials are easy to find on the updated site along with tools and scads of other tutorials by category.

You can find her in the usual places too…Flickr, Facebook, YouTube, Etsy. She’s covered all the bases.

Polymer in the board room

This Spring Sprang Sprung table by Maine’s Bonnie Bishoff and J. M. Syron started small and grew bigger.

Bonnie explains that, “The table started as a request from a client to make a board room table and she wanted us to veneer the surface with a design inspired by a tryptich wall piece about 40 inches across.”

The polymer artist/furniture maker duo had already made several large fantastical pieces for the client.

The design concept showed an 8 ft table that would be 9 times larger than the original wall piece and would require 12 pounds of clay.

Bonnie shared a number of in-process photos that will give you an idea of what is required for a piece of this size. (I’ve slid her photos over from Facebook so that you can see them all at a glance.

Bonnie works in jewelry as well as furniture. Visit Artful Home, Bonnie’s shawl pin site, Facebook and their website to acquaint yourself with the wide span of their work. Start your week big!

Scrap clay possibilities

In a rich and rambling post Laurie Mika fills us in on her rich and rambling art adventures. She’s been both a teacher and a student over the summer. And she’s been getting ready for fall shaows and a workshop in Mexico.

On her blog she shows how she used bright scrap clay as the base for this piece. Her photos are large and if you click on them you can take a close look at the recycled jewels, milagros, mirrors, beads and baubles buried in her polymer.

Her nichos and altars are full of scavenged items and bric-a-brac. Monarch butterflies inspired one piece in which she embedded butterfly wings.

“In Mexico, it was believed that the monarchs represented the souls of the departed,” she explains. “All along the forest path leading up to where the millions of butterflies cluster in the trees, one can see butterfly wings lining the paths like orange and black jewels.”

“The world is one gigantic panorama of possibility. Really taking the time to look and to grab onto that which speaks to your core and fills you with wonder is at the heart of inspiration,” she concludes. Track Laurie’s schedule on her site and keep up with her on Facebook.

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