Autumn leaves

Moscow’s Natalia Leitman (madlen) gathers three translucent polymer leaves into a fall brooch.

The gently curved thin variegated pinks, reds, and oranges glow and show off the vein markings. See more of Natalia on Instagram and Flickr

Watch what you love

If you love tools and would like to forget about politics, join Craftcast’s Alison Lee and her panel of artists on tonight’s I LOVE TOOLS.

Tonight’s online show is the 10th in this popular series. It starts at 7:30 ET (Wednesday, October 19) and you can register for drawings here.

Autumn leaves

These tiny maple leaf earrings by Michigan’s Sue Screws called to me every time I walked by this display during my weekend class at Creative Journey Studio in Georgia.

Sue made these delicate cutouts for a number of types of trees in fall colors with intricate veining and realistic colors. I couldn’t resist wearing these on my long drive back to Ohio.

You can enjoy a few more photos from the weekend here and here. (Sue is hard to find on ine, try Facebook.) Back to our regular schedule tomorrow.

Beach creatures in polymer

Haven’t you been inspired by those big sculptural shells on the beach and wondered what they could illustrate?

Christine Harris says of her work, “Horseshoe crabs have copper based blue blood that is used by the medical industry for its antibacterial qualities and is still being studied. Basically they milk the blood from the horseshoe crab and try to release it but many of them do not survive.”

She usually does “lots of nerdy research” on the creatures while she works and often explains their meaning on her blog when they’re finished. Be mesmerized by the work-in-progress shots from this Virginia art therapist and sculptor.

Next week’s posts may be sporadic as I celebrate FIMO50 in Germany. Cut the cake and sing with us virtually as we look at what it means to turn 50.

Mixed media curls

Sweet gum tree pods litter the sidewalks at this time of year. Polymer illustrator Helena Bogosian found a creative use for her stash of dried seed pods. They make amazingly fetching curls and more.

Prowl through Helena’s Facebook and Instagram sites to see how she’s turned polymer and the bounty from her sweet gum tree into moody, haunting portraits.

Sculpture to wear

Donna Greenberg shows us Blue Bird Biscuit choker, her version of twisted and sculpted polymer on a cord.

Donna includes work-in-progress photos that give you insight into her thinking for this series of organic, flowing shapes. More complex versions link with one another to form chains.

Donna and Christine Dumont and Ronna Sarvas Weltman offer a series of 5-week online creative design courses to enhance each student’s design skills and bring vitality and impact to the work while exploring what it takes to develop their own distinctive series.

The classes start in September. Read all about the courses here.

Mentoring as Art

Washington silversmith Sarah Wilbanks says that the jewelry in her current show contains the most polymer she’s ever used in her pieces. The backs of the silver bezels on her necklace of pods are as interesting as the polymer fronts.

Two other features kept me prowling through her Etsy, Facebook, and Pinterest pages — her series of carved translucent pieces (she documents her process in photos) and the title of her current show at Water Works Gallery in the San Juan Islands.

Called Mentoring as Art, the show highlights the artists who have studied in Micki Lipp’s studio over 27 years. It explores the role of mentor and mentee in the hopes of creating a new generation of mentors. What a smart idea!

Bugs in galleries

Wisconsin’s Joyce Fritz has been celebrating creepy crawlies in the most dramatic ways since 1993. You’ll see her Yipes polymer insects in crawling around the finest galleries and shops across the country.

That doesn’t leave her much time for online exposure so perhaps the best way to catch all her bugs in one spot is on Google or on her website. She’s worth tracking down. Her story is best told (and you get a better idea of the size of these critters) in this interview in her college alumni magazine.

This year’s crop of lightning bugs encouraged me to shed more light on Joyce’s work.

Imitating agate

The UK’s Claire Wallis intrigues us with another smoothly blended cane. This time her cane layers imitate a blue lace agate geode. Made into a small brooch, it cradles a small pocket of crystals in its heart.

Claire’s recent Water and Lightning canes were recently explained in a tutorial offered on CraftArtEdu. She shares her inspirations on Pinterest and more photos on Flickr.

Pods, pots and periods

On her blog you can see how Wendy Moore’s polymer pod series developed methodically and colorfully. Her collection of pod shapes offered a great place to test the understanding of color that she picked up working through Tracy Holmes’ Colour Deck.

Wendy limited her experiments to flat, textured, cutout and stacked graphic shapes and then simply linked them together.

The proof of the pudding for the project, however, was seeing Wendy (in glasses), her mother and her sister wearing the series on her Instagram site.

Wendy also reports on the latest activities of the Samunnat ladies in Nepal who traveled by bus to Kathmandu thanks to support from the polymer community. Read about their adventure here.

Polymer gardening

Few people tend their flowers as faithfully as Ohio’s Kim Arden. Gearing up for her summer shows (this weekend is Kalamazoo) she’s awash in flowers.

You’ll note a subtle stripe in her backgrounds and a mix of surface textures and graphic elements. The pearls here add another grace note. She has such a bounty of blooms that she makes it fun to pick from her garden. You can get a burst of energy just by visiting her Facebook photos.

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