Polymer for tea

Who uses silver tea sets these days? Alice Stroppel does. This set immediately sent her to Wonderland and she embellished the serving pieces with polymer characters from Lewis Caroll’s tales of Alice. Examine the pots closeup on her Flickr page. Here she is on Etsy and Facebook.

Syndee Holt took the pictures as she visited Alice’s shop/studio in Florida. Continue the tour on Syndee’s Facebook page. You’ll spy a silver pitcher in the front window that’s revived with polymer. Nothing escapes Alice’s talent for recycling.

Polymer reruns

Vintage celluloid pieces are the starting point for California’s Laurel Steven’s New Old series of pendants and brooches. “In this series I’m combining molded pieces of vintage bits with more modern textures,” she explains.

She revives and refashions her extensive collection of celluloid by molding polymer versions of the originals and updating them with today’s colors then pairing them with trendy textured backgrounds.

Laurel plays with other techniques that you can see on Facebook, on Flickr, on Pinterest and in her Etsy shop. You can sense that she’s drawn to the old souls of the celluloid florals and enjoys giving these early plastics a second chance in polymer.

Spring upcycling with polymer

Polymer can spruce-up, fix-up forgotten treasures around your home as you tackle spring cleaning. Redecorate cheaply with upcycled finds.

Israel’s Hila Bushari provides a video of ideas to get you started. A bit of paint and flourishes of molded polymer turn this dull picture frame into a trendy accent.

Find out more about Hila’s tutorials and artwork on her blog, Etsy, and on Flickr. She offers more free videos here.

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.

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