Monika Brydova of Czech Republic imagines spring flowers just about to bloom in polymer. They resemble our snowdrops.
Four slim petals are textured on the inside with brighter colors on the outside. They’re joined at the top and wrapped with what looks like wire but it’s polymer too. Nestled inside the petals a yellow stamen adds contrast.
A snake crawls through Leslie Blackford’s polymer woodland scene and bird peeks out of one of the tree stumps. Moss creeps onto the rocks. The creatures are waiting for something.
This small pastoral scene provides a perfect setting for a cell phone!
Leslie worked out the structure (it’s 4″ x 2 1/2″ x 2 1/2″) so that a phone balances perfectly against the trees. Now your phone which used to get laid down and lost has a stand that makes it easy to find.
She devised a Candyland scene and other themes for her phone cradle sculptures. Making polymer art that doubles as a useful household item is a trick that Leslie does with style.
Read about the L’Atelier: Polymer Clay Workshop that Leslie and friends are setting up from June 1-3 at the French Lick Resort in Indiana. Registration opens February 24.
Need a dose of Nerve Tonic to begin your week? Romania’s Claudia Chindea says her business name came from her grandmother who thought that color was a cure for the soul. Polymer artists would agree.
Claudia’s business that combines polymer, fiber and fabric is now based in Sweden.
Always a seamstress and then trained in graphics, Claudia says, “I learned to observe in a much closer way. To draw first, and then to move on to the material. My mind opened up. That’s how my collection of jewels, made out of fabric, with much color and texture, begins.”
You can read a little about her (use a translator) and see more of her fabric purses in interviews here and here and on Instagram. Helen Breil sent this new link along.
Free I Love Tools
The weekend rehearsal for Wednesday’s free I Love Tools webinar on Craftcast gave me a peek at really cool new tools and ideas. These artists are clever!
Plus Alison Lee is always able to dig up generous giveaways and tempting coupons. Whether you’re in the mood for heavy equipment, the latest little gizmo or just want to keep up with tool trends, you’ll want to join Wednesday’s online party. Sign up. No cost.
Spain’s Sona Grigoryan created her own Rolex, or as she has named it, a Sonex, out of watch parts and polymer. Her drawings and paper prototypes show us how she worked out the design. In her words it’s an organic/mechanic combination.
Sona’s influences are wide-ranging – from Gaudi to Leonardo. Her designs are fearless and always tinged with the flavor of her Armenian home.
Tired of designs in the safe zone? Sonia’s one of the artists to check to find out what’s happening on the edge. Here she is on Facebook.
This pile of fall leaves from Meg Newberg is her latest cane discovery. (They’re all from one cane.) She loves to experiment with canes and find new patterning methods. She stumbled on a way to make soft-edged designs that are great for glowing pumpkins, spooky spiders and organic shapes. She calls them her Painterly Canes.
Maybe you can figure it out. If not, she sells her tutorial for a very reasonable price on Etsy. See more examples on her blog.
More fall colors from Russia’s Anna Krichevskaya. The rough texture matches the rustic pallete which is highlighted by scratches in the layered surface. Zoom in to feel the intensity.
I enjoyed this hip, arty, quick video of the Moscow market where Anna sells her wares. Except for the language, this footage could have been shot at art shows around the globe. Here’s Anna on Flickr.
The UK’s Pippa Chandler has been spending some time in her woods too. While she likes to try lots of techniques and images, somehow she circles back to leaves.
Nature provides the source material that Pippa enhances with color and texture. Here she’s used winged seed pods and elderberry buds as her starting point, making molds then using the molds to make pendants. She’s painted the results, sanding and buffing them for a distressed and loved look.
Barcelona’s Sona Grigoryan offers much more than this handful of Manuscript Beads on her Flickr site. For these ethnic beads Sona transfers flowing text and historic Armenian images to clay and forms the beads from strips torn from the flat sheets of transfers.
Lately she’s been constructing hollow organic beads and wrapping them with fiber or fiber-like vines and pods. She even tries macrame in polymer.
You can watch her work move from beads to sculpture to fiber and then to a combination of all three. She’s not finished with her experiments so we’ll visit often. Here she is on Facebook.
Ronna added washes of color on beads to highlight some colors and mute others. She gave the necklace a good shake at the end to make sure the focal beads would settle where she predicted they would.
All along she changed the arrangement until she felt the love. She made sure the piece spoke to her. It’s a good lesson in listening and in playing around.
French snapshots
If you’re in the mood for more snapshots, take a look at Dawn-Marie DeLara’s reporting on our summer trip to France. Dawn-Marie is a muralist (she says decorative artist), mixed media and polymer artist from Minnesota.
Trying new ways of working is easier when you’re in a beautiful setting among friends who cheer your successes and laugh off your missteps. Dawn-Marie chronicled our time together with a light-hearted approach. She brings the same great style to her publication, 365 Being. There’s a free sample online full of great craft, food and project tips.
John and Corliss Rose have been experimenting with shooting less exhibition style photos and aiming for a looser, weirder vibe. You’ll have to click on their Absolum Pod Necklace photo to see this spunky shot.
PCD crops right into what we know you’ll want to scrutinize – the upturned shapes of the pods and the way the lively beads are connected to the tubing.
This California mixed media duo are driven by experimentation and exploration. Absolum Pods are part of their Alice in Wonderland series that started as an exercise in simplicity. You can sample the results on their Flickr site and their Etsy gallery.
Corliss is heading up the IPCA Awards this year – that’s the competition you’re planning to enter October 1, right?
Tuesday’s quiz!
Tune in online tomorrow (August 20) at 1PM EST as CraftyLink’s Wendy Strain quizzes me about my new book. Got a comment? You can ask questions and enter their drawing for a free copy of the book.
The interview will be also be recorded. You must be a member of the free Tuesday Shmoozeday group to watch and chat live. Here’s the sign-up info.
