Polymer Clay Daily

Easter peeps and bunnies

Cassells polymer peeps

What’s Easter without peeps and bunnies? Here are polymer versions of both for your holiday weekend.

Denver’s Molly Cassell earned headlines in the Denver newspaper for her polymer Peppatar 3D diorama in the city’s third annual peeps competition. Molly used polymer for everything in the piece – the peeps, the drink cups and even the popcorn – and came in first in the contest.

Buddha bunny by Goodin

Ohio’s Cody Goodin finished his polymer Bunny Buddha just in time. The bunny sits on lettuce leaves in the lettuce position, sharing his wisdom with the world. You can see the sculpture emerge (he didn’t start out as a bunny but his ears grew) on Cody’s blog.

However you celebrate, have a joyous and happy Easter weekend.

Serendipitous Monday

Tammy Durham illustration in polymer clay

You’ll need a big cup of coffee to sip while you follow today’s links. Polymer illustrator Tammy Durham emailed me her latest densely decorated, Klimt-inspired piece and a link to her updated web site.

Coincidentally Jay King sent a link to Smashing Magazine’s extensive collection of beautiful plasticine (and polymer) artworks. Tammy Durham’s work is in the collection and you’ll find several others familiar to you. Charlotte Oh (see her teen blogger here) works in sculpey and is new to our list of illustrators.

Charlotte Oh's teen blogger

You can blame fate for the time you blow looking at animations and illustrations from around the world. These novel and often humorous ads, posters and illustrations provide great inspiration for a Monday. Enjoy!

Polymer fish lips

Ottenbreit's polymer portal series
Ottenbreit's polymer fish

Alaskans Karen Ottenbreit and Katie Way brought a northern exposure to Synergy. While I can’t find a proper link to Katie online, I did catch a few of Karen’s sea creatures in the gallery.

Her series of portal pins and pendants tickled me. Karen’s story of how a sassy girl from the south side of Chicago makes good in Eagle River, AK will make you understand why her fish laugh.

Synergized

If you’re following along, check out: Iris Mishly, Amy Crawley, Janice Barbanel and comments on the clay/no clay discussion from Chris Dembinski. “Not Your Child’s Fimo” was the title of the shout out from Lisa Bayne of Artful Home.

Monday lessons from Uliczny and Campbell

Uliczny's mokume earrings

Michigan’s Christi Uliczny (RiverValleyDesign) combines pearlex powders, alcohol inks and gold leaf with two different clays to create these shimmering Rocky Path earrings.

When I saw that her tutorial detailing the process is available I jumped on it. I’m a klutz with powders and inks and need all the help I can get. Her method is straightforward and clearly explained. I’ll start my week with a lesson.

Campbell's ballet sculpture

Sculpture lessons

Heather Campbell shows her work step-by-step in a recent post. Starting with two candlesticks, toe shoes and hat boxes, Heather builds an amazing polymer-covered sculpture for Utah Ballet West’s annual “Shoe In”. This small photo doesn’t do the piece justice. It’s the kind of art that’s best appreciated up close.

Tinapple’s clean slate

Integrating my polymer clay skills with my Photoshop expertise was on my 2009 list of resolutions and I’m happy to have made progress toward this goal with this vase which is my entry for the Synergy exhibit.

This 10.5″ x 8″ cherry vase was turned by my husband. I added polymer clay transfers of old photos of the women in my family. Maureen Carlson’s story necklace got me thinking about telling stories with my art.

The turning point in my experimentations was discovering Valerie Aharoni’s baking parchment paper technique for transfers. I used sepia here to make the photos a uniform tone but colors transfer well too. I fired the polymer with a paint stripper gun.

I promised to put more of my own work on the blog in 2009, didn’t I? The sound you hear is my scratching two goals off my list. I’m ending this decade with a clean slate. Read more in this interview I did with Eni Oken (ClayLessons).

Young’s snowflake cutouts

Camille Young (CamilleArt) usually creates polymer clay figures and toys but she ventures out to stretch other muscles from time to time. Recently she fashioned charming snowflake ornaments using only four or five small cookie cutters and rounds of polymer clay stacked on top one another.

Zoom in to see how Camille turned the cutters various ways, generating more angles and patterns. Paint, texturing and a few seed beads make these simple techniques intriguing and complex.

Christmas may be over but it never hurts to keep an eye out for successful ideas. And snowflakes will be with us for a few months.

During this year-end week I’ll be trying to put some perspective on the past year and start envisioning the next. I’m excited to see what’s ahead.

Apostolescu’s freestyle toys

Matei Apostolescu’s profusion of polymer toys and models make him look like Romania’s modern day Santa Claus. His fleet of race cars, jets, submarines and weapons delight the kid in all of us.

He uses simple clay shapes to build complex machines which he textures and paints. Keep clicking on his 152 toys to see the whole range.

Matei’s paintings and illustrations on his DeviantArt site help acquaint you with his aesthetic. His illustrations and his clay art have a 1960’s “Peter Max meets the digital age” sensibility.

Matei is known as one of the hottest freestyle artists in the world of illustration and says of his process, “I try to explore as much as I can. It is a fusion of different media: drawing, vector, photography, manipulation, sometimes even clay modeling. To me, inspiration is about having the courage to explore the world, and especially yourself and the processes that take place in your own mind.”

Susan Lomuto (DailyArtMuse) ran into Matei’s work and sent the link along.

Henley’s fish ornaments, Wade’s bobbins

Ginny Henley has been busy making polymer clay fish ornaments for her family. These are fish with attitude and color and style. The yellow one here is carrying a purse. Another has glasses.

Wouldn’t you love to be there when her relatives open their gifts?

You can see more of her “school” on her Flickr site and see her jewelry work here.

Bobbins with a twist

Susan Lomuto spotted Tina Wade’s polymer bobbin rings on Crafthaus. It’s fun to see how Tina tweaked the design with some ingenious construction.