Ancient polymer faience

Mari O'Dell's Egyptian mummy beads on PolymerClayDaily.com

Don’t try to predict where your ideas will take you. Hop on Mari O’Dell’s magic carpet to see what I mean.

Mari’s journey started in the mummy section of the NYC Met Museum where she hung out as a teenager.

Recently she took my “Slots and Dots” online polymer class and reconnected with her Egyptian impulses. She learned to extrude narrow tube beads like those found in the layers of mummy wrappings. In Mari’s version, a scarab and beads dusted with metallics are interspersed with her imitative ancient faience tubes.

Beads are an ancient form of art and currency. Their echoes still ricochet around the globe. Please wait until the carpet comes to a complete stop before you leave your seat. Who says we can’t travel during a pandemic?

If you’d like to recharge your batteries, join us over at StudioMojo.

Challenge home run

Dayle Jones finishes her 100-day challenge with a winner on PolymerClayDaily.com

UK’s Dayl Jones (Planet Isis) slides into the end of her 100-day challenge with this collaged veneer two-sided home run.

The soft watery colors of the oval pendant are impressive but she tops it off by repeating the colors in the polymer tubes and thin-sliced beads on the cord. Now it all hangs together with panache.

It’s those little touches that bump Dayle’s pendant up a notch.

Garden inspirations

Pavla Cepelikova creates Columbines on PolymerClayDaily.com

Czech Republic’s Pavla Cepelikova (SaffronAddict) has taken liberties with her version of the Columbine flowers (at the top right of the photo).

The long tubes drape down and flare to reveal secret colors as they open at the bottom. Pavla likes these bell shapes in her garden and polymer will allow her to wear them on her ears.

What inspiration is blooming in your garden?

Dots with a twist

Gail Garbe takes dotted tube steps forward on PolymerClayDaily.com

I flinched when this necklace from Ontario’s Gail Garbe popped up on my screen. “That looks remarkably familiar,” I thought.

Then I had to laugh at myself when I realized that Gail took my Saturday Craftcast class and stayed up late coming up with her own twist on the concept. I must have done something right! Gail extruded the tubes and added the dots perfectly.

Then she added her own off-kilter gaily colored spacer beads. It all works!

This is what teachers hope to see – students who take their concepts to the next level. Gail has taught me a thing or two!

Playful design and simulated retreat

Angela Garrod mixes textures and shapes with a delicate touch on PolymerClayDaily.com

UK’s Angela Garrod builds her long pendant with square tubes that end in birch-like round beads.

Childish Games We Played ends in a pendant that’s textured and worn with a surprising top to its shape.

Just when you think she’s finished, Angela adds a length of handmade chain. It all adds up to a refined and elegant yet playful piece. Her works are consistently well-considered and thoroughly designed in a way that makes it look effortless.

You have to visit her website to get a full view of her impeccable taste.

We translated the Virginia retreat into a Zoom meeting this week. For an hour and a half every day, we simulated the annual gathering. It was nostalgic and fun and reminded us of what we were missing. We left feeling hungry for next year. Come on over to StudioMojo to see our takeaways.

Tubular trends

Mona Ferrar stacks up an arty pile of embellished tubes on PolymerClayDaily.com

Spain’s Mons Ferrer (Bisuteria Creativa – Fi-Mons) brought tubes home from a class with Lucy Struncova. She’s been making and arranging them into pendants ever since.

With an assortment of diameters, lengths, colors, and patterns, they stack up into geometric tubular art to wear.

Ending the year in style

Nikolina Otrzan shows you how to end the year in style on PolymerClayDaily.com

Croatia’s Nikolina Otrzan (Orsons World) tempts us with a new downloadable tutorial coming out at the end of the month. On her slim collaged tube pendants, dots join stripes along with distressed solids.

Her tutorials are full of surprising methods, copious photos, and sophisticated designs. This could be an end of the year gift to yourself that will properly launch your skills into 2020.

Here she is on Facebook and Etsy.

Playing during a party

Loretta Lam test drives a new idea at Clayathon on PolymerClayDaily

It’s not easy to be productive at a busy event like Clayathon where you are bombarded with ideas and opportunities to socialize.

Loretta Lam bravely used her time to play, trying out an idea that had been rattling around in her brain. She envisions a long chain of these 3″ tubes covered with mix and match patterns. The neutral palette keeps her focus on shape and design.

Passersby help her with a thumbs up or down. The patterns are all Loretta and the shapes allow us to see them in a new way.

Tubular polymer

Two artists have gone tubular for spring. Same thinking with very different outcomes from Austria’s Izabela Nowak and Pennsylvania’s Genevieve Williamson.

Izabela uses slim tubes in graduated purples formed into a 3D necklace. She has been experimenting for months with what she calls her Straw Technique.

Genevieve takes a more minimalist approach with long slender polymer tubes strung into a bright multi-color strand. “Is it too light?” she wonders on Instagram.

PCD will look at several new stringing, assembling, designing developments that have emerged recently. Looks are changing for spring!

Polymer tubes

Designs seem to show up in bunches, don’t they? Here’s Ford/Forlano’s most recent variation of an angular piece that shares a shape with Margit Bohmer’s stamped and painted folded squares that we looked at on Monday.

Dave models the big black necklace version of the theme that they’ll be selling at ACC Baltimore this weekend.

Dave and Steve make their design from round tubes cut at an angle that allows the beads to bump and bunch. The surface treatment on the red, white and blue polymer is tantalizing and almost looks metallic.

The edge of each bead reveals solid color below the thin surface veneer. The clasp is cut at the same angle and repeats the theme. You can read about their latest shows on Facebook.

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