Polymer feathers

France’s Isa Maria Noella Castellano combines a couple of flat, subtly textured polymer feathers with a bead and a metal charm, suspends them on a ball chain and comes up with a very trendy pendant.

The translation software calls them Giraffe Feathers…does that sound right? She used this soothing photo as her header on Facebook.

Super raffle

If you missed last week’s online I love tools, you can read the recap, follow the tool links and get in on the door prizes. (Alison’s new Craftcast site was loading and the raffle had to be delayed until all the pixels were in place.) A $10 raffle ticket helps the Samunnat project and gets you in the pool for some great prizes. Winners announced on October 27.

Speaking of prizes, the cutoff for Iris Mishly’s Flower Academy drawing is Thursday night. Make a comment on Monday’s post to enter. Good luck!

Manicured pendant and free tutorial

We end the week with pumpkin-colored pendant that comes with a Friday freebie tutorial.

Galina Grebennikova shows how she achieved this neatly textured pendant with no molds, no stamps. The tool she uses looks like something you’d find in a manicure set or a toolbox.

The trick is repeat, repeat, repeat and then highlight with dark colors. Here’s the photo tutorial.

Galina’s from Moscow and lives in Irvine, California. Small world! She offers some texture variations on her blog here. PCD has picked up some of her other tricks in these past posts.

Polymer in the woods

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.

You’ll find lots more examples on her Flickr site and on Facebook.

Stamping fall images

Maryland’s Tamara Shea is primarily a stamper and printmaker who uses polymer clay (usually brown) to bring her hand-carved images to life. Acrylic paints bring out the details and a sealer protects the work. Fall is a particularly appropriate time to feature her leaves and finds from the woods.

Tamara opened her successful Etsy shop in 2006. As you flip through her work, note the remarkable consistency even as she expands her themes.

You may enjoy the bug and butterfly pictures she’s been taking of late and posting on Flickr. Her eye is drawn to objects and creatures that eventually crawl into her work.

Polymer mashups

The mashups that occur when artists meet are fascinating. Can you guess who came up with this collaborative polymer piece?

A sinuous, sexy frame surrounds a bumpy colorful geometric center that invites inspection. The result is a very natural, organic and flower-like pendant.

In this case, Jana Roberts Benzon flipped one of Helen Breil’s Big Twist shapes to accommodate a pod covered in Jana’s Fakir dimensional bits.

More mashups as the week continues. Check Judy Belcher’s recent book for more meetings of art minds. Got a pal who might collaborate with you? It expands your vision.

This mountain network is quite slow so delivery may be quirky. The good news is that there will be lots to share with you when I get home.

Garden polymer

Russia’s Tanya Mayorova tightly winds thin strips of polymer round and round until their layers of muted color form a dense flower-like composition that is accented with dots of metal.

She pairs these polymer cabbage roses with rough cords, leather or even scarves for a very romantic and sophisticated look.

Tanya is such a trickster with texture that even when you zoom in on her work on Flickr, it’s hard to figure out how she could have packed them so densely. Have a lovely weekend.

Integrating tutorials

Lorraine Vogel's polymer pendants and earrings glow with graceful shapes and layered colors that make me envious. Look closely and you may spot tricks she's learned from tutorials by Lynda Moseley and Ginger Davis Allman but the stamps, the carving and the colors are distinctly her own. She uses tutorials in the way they were meant to be used, quickly integrating them into her signature style.

A graphic artist from South Florida, Lorraine brings a keen eye for balance and harmony to polymer. She has a couple of Etsy shops and you can find her on Facebook. Her Flickr photos will give you a wider look at her eye-pleasing creations.

Need a freebie?

Don't miss Margit Bohmer's step-by-step photos of her doodle transfers for some free weekend fun.

Polymer crossovers

Canada’s Claire Maunsell worked in hot glass for twenty years and she reflexively handles polymer as if it were hot and liquid. These beautiful hollow pods are created using a technique that Claire explains in the upcoming Global Perspectives book which is full of new names, exciting concepts and scads of pictures.

Artists who crossover from glass, textiles, ceramics and sculpture are perhaps the most exciting part of our global story.

While you wait (the book arrives in July), enjoy Claire’s rough yet sophisticated glass-meets-polymer work on her Etsy shop (where she’s busy adding items), her Zibbet shop, her blog and her Flickr pages.

Polymer mashup

These pendants-in-process by Meisha Barbee begged to be photographed at the end of the conference. Right next to them a few new earrings waited to be assembled.

The angled cuts on the earrings may give you a clue that Meisha had watched Jana Roberts Benzon demonstrate her laser cut technique. But with Meisha’s distinctive color sense and handling of elements, the Benzon-like pieces retained Meisha’s vibe. What a great example of integrating a technique and sharing without simply copying!

Trendy French polymer

Dorothee Vantorre’s day-in-the-studio pictures (on Flickr and on Facebook) show off her trendy polymer designs and let us oggle her workspace. Her funny French sensibilty veers from pleasant monsters to delicate geometrics. The designs mirror her training in illustration and architecture.

Note that there aren’t many tools or tricks on her work surfaces. Dorothee relies on color and patient manipulation to build her fresh creations. Her understated raindrop earrings end in a pop of delicious color. And there’s plenty more in her Etsy shop. A little French fun to begin your week.

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