Polymer Clay Daily

Summery flowers

Doesn’t this necklace from Cecilia Botton look charmingly simple? A no-brainer!

Extruded square black tubes of polymer are interspersed with shorter sections of tube that have been embellished with simple flower cane slices. The colorful slices pop out against the black background.

Cecilia is French and works in Hong Kong. As a fabric buyer she has lots of experience with what does and doesn’t work in patterns. Her web sites are a riot of experiments and playing with patterns in ways that catch the eye. See what she’s done with the Stroppel cane. When she’s not traveling, Cecilia gets up early to fit in some polymer work before she begins her job and it’s easiest to track her work on Flickr.

Giving myself a long weekend! See you here on Monday.

Beach bicones, spirals and stars

Laura Timmins’new polymer Ocean Yoko necklace sends us back to the beach with its wavy bicone beads, spiraled shells and starfish strung on cord that she hand twists from embroidery thread.

It’s as if she cast a net and strung up everything she caught.

Yoko is a new addition to Laura’s Swirl Stone line for galleries which, as you might guess, are mostly located on the seashores.

Check out the matching earrings.  What inspires you this season?

How to build a design

One of the satisfactions of attending a workshop for polymer artists is watching how others work.

The black marks that Loretta Lam sketched across these beads gave me a clue as to where she was headed with her design. The baked gray base beads are made from blended scrap clay (ultralight and polymer) which she covered with veneers, adding a few sculptural elements and textures.

This week Loretta posted a picture of the final necklace with the juxtaposed lines, patterns and shapes all in place. The mixture of elements forces your eye around the piece and offers something interesting no matter where your focus lands.

You can read more about Loretta’s art and business in this recent interview and on her Facebook fan page. Does this make you rethink your process?

 

Polymer stackers

Wallace stacker beads

“Stacker beads,” Amy Wallace admits, “are something I could make until the sun blows up.” This Cincinnati artist has been working on spirals since 1995 and offers a how-to tutorial on her Etsy shop. This necklace is one of her bright variations.

“For me, polymer clay isn’t about making the most complicated cane, it’s about creating inventive, spontaneous designs with hints of the past thrown in. Color is my second language,” she says.

Amy mixes seed beeds, fiber, paper, buttons into her art arsenal. Her blog is a good read with a free tutorial tucked in from time to time. Be sure to check out her polymer and seed bead embroidery and her freeform chevron beads on her Facebook page too.

Scribbled polymer

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.

Polymer shell game

Steven Ford solicits your opinion on the findings on this new Shells necklace. Silver or blackened silver for the chain and clasp? Silver or gold-leafed centers for the shells? Version 1 or 2? Steve contends that the white silver looks “unconsidered” while Dave likes the slinky polished white silver. How do you weigh in? (Leave a comment on their blog.)

Steve explains that, “In a way, this new work is getting back to our roots with caning polymer clay. There is an added layer of my recent interest in printmaking too, as the clay is embossed with a linoleum cut plate. It’s also painted to bring out the texture of the surface, and to complicate the color within the clay itself.” Read the full story here.

This shell design sat around in the studio for a couple of years before the artists could decide how to use it. Do you have designs marinating in your studio?

May Day polymer

Rosica Mohamed from Sofia, Bulgaria brings us a branch of spring buds realistically sculpted from polymer. I’m guessing that this was part of her May Day attire. Can’t you just picture a maypole dancer wearing these blossoms as she weaves a streamer over and under?

Rosica’s updated blogs  and Facebook page make it easy to watch her progress to increasingly refined work and experiment with putting a Bulgarian spin on standard techniques.

Polymer chips and tubes

Last time we checked in on Elena Samsonova she was playing with salt and pepper. Now she’s into chips…as in this necklace made from 300 thin polymer chips imprinted with French postage stamp transfers.

Let’s applaud her tenacity. Her story (Moscow to Brooklyn, child psychologist to artist) and her website are full of twists and treats.

My late-night cruise through your websites also netted these story beads from Erin Prais-Hintz. She encircles a tube bead with a familiar saying, favorite lyrics, names or dates stamped into polymer.

Erin incorporates these message beads into wistful Simple Truth pendants, endearing wearable reminders. Erin is part of this month’s Storybook project over at the Vintag blog where they’ll be featuring an interview with her and offering giveaways of some of her pendants.

Polymer with magnets

Niche Award winner Melanie West enjoys the challenge of a new design and she’s engineered some clever solutions with her new polymer Ball and Star necklace shown here. A magnet secures the ball next to the star and acts as a clasp on this piece which is strung on buna cord (and check out what looks like buna rings over the cording).

She tried a similar solution using memory wire and found it too bouncy in her test drives. Melanie shares more of her design process along with some of her successes and failures in this post.

Dynamic polymer

Making dynamic art for the body is what Donna Greenberg says she’s all about. The dynamics of her new curving Saber Tooth necklace shows what she means.

The swirled beads refuse to lie flat, pointing their gold-tipped ends at each other in a colorful dance of shape and color. The piece combines menacing and playful impulses.

Donna’s one busy artist! See her spring display at Sample NYC.