Polymer Clay Daily

Let your fingers do the talking

Ron Lehocky's takeaway from Lindly Haunani's class on PolymerClayDaily.com

Ron Lehocky made this bevy of bowls after Lindly’s recent class in Kentucky. It’s comforting to know that even after he’s made 50,000 hearts, he still needs to practice just like the rest of us. Amazing!

Do your fingers need to wrestle the clay before you can you’re certain that a concept has lodged itself securely in your noggin?

No matter how many pages of instructions I have, my fingers insist on fumbling through the twists and turns.

Ron’s an overachiever, as you can see. I’ll consider myself a star if I can come away from Lindly’s Columbus class in October with a fraction of that. We have a few seats left! Come play with us.

See what outrageousness and oddities we’ve scooped up for this Saturday’s StudioMojo. Keeping up with our art medium is always surprising and fun. 

Eggactly

Kathy Koontz uses her bargello veneer for holiday eggs on PolymerClayDaily.com

No messy dip-dying for South Carolina’s Kathy Koontz (flowertownoriginals).

Kathy Koontz uses her bargello veneer for holiday eggs on PolymerClayDaily.com

Her Easter eggs are covered with polymer scraps turned into stripes and then taken a step farther.

Kathy offsets the stripes to make a bargello veneer. Her resulting zigzag pattern is hypnotically, obsessively detailed.

Now what? Veneers are fun to make but it’s not always clear how to use the results. Eggactly!

If making bargello is new to you, watch this YouTube tutorial from Australia’s Jessama.

Yes, you can

Gosia's bright collaged earrings challenge us on PolymerClayDaily.com

“I could never wear these,” is what you’re telling yourself, right? I’ve been adding progressively larger earrings to my stash to get over my fear of being too old, too short, too whatever.

And you know what? I’m getting comfy with in-your-face, I’m an artist, deal-with-it earrings.

These colorful collages from Poland’s Gosia (Malgorzata Wawrzynczak at Moiko) are my current favorites. She’s in the silkscreen biz so I’m guessing that’s part of her process. Are they bits of collaged silkscreened veneers or are they canes? Who knows?

Earrings that don’t match? Really? Yes, really. It’s a thing and it won’t hurt you to try it. It’s time to (carefully, gently) drag our scaredy-cat selves out of the house and into the roaring 2020s.

Red fox ornaments

Laurel Swetnam hangs scrap foxes on the tree on PolymerClayDaily.com

Portland’s Laurel Swetnam loves her deep reds and oranges. By this time of year, she’s left with lots of cane ends and leftover veneers.

Not a problem! The patterns and colors play nicely with each other as she pieces them into these charmingly angular fox ornaments. Simple shapes become stunning ornaments.

Sharing the love

Slovenia’s Marijana Grubic heads us back to Valentine’s Day with these shapes silkscreened with love and topped with teensy hearts. Here she is on Facebook.

By combining two veneers bisected by a band of silver on domed shapes, Marijana makes an unusual pendant and earrings beyond the usual hearts and flowers.

It was all about love and caring as we began our fundraiser for Lindly yesterday. Didn’t you feel proud of your art community as they turned out to help Lindly without hesitation? 

Keep spreading the love. Thank you for your generosity!

Confounding Monday twists

Carol Blackburn twists black and white in new ways on PolymerClayDaily.com

We thought we’d seen black and white manipulated and stretched and combined in every way possible. Then UK’s Carol Blackburn took another look and came up with this Barcode necklace.

It’s made of her hollow tetra beads, dimensional shapes that remind me of small cream containers and fancy tea bags.

So not only are the striped patterns confounding, but the shapes add another layer of difficulty. The most magical thing is that her methods are actually elegantly simple. Here’s hoping she adds this to her upcoming classes.

Fall meets winter in a brooch

Valerie Bodino Nazet lets fall and winter collide gracefully in a polymer brooch on PolymerClayDaily.com

Now isn’t that the essence of fall?

France’s Valérie Bodino-Nazet situates a polymer shield shape of fall’s oranges, golds, and blues next to winter’s black and whites. She bisects the brooch with a flowing wire shape. 

I couldn’t tell if Valerie had finished the construction when she took this photo but my eye shouted, “Stop! That’s it.”

Here’s the brooch on Instagram.

Nurturing curiosity

Katie Way gets curious about cut-and-replace on PolymerClayDaily.com

This work-in-progress shot from Alaska’s Katie Way makes my heart sing.

Spot-on colors, straightforward technique. Cut and replace meets updated quilt pattern meets polymer.

It’s an updated of several old ways of working.

That’s what we’ll be talking about on StudioMojo this Saturday. As we become more expert at what we do, we tend to lose our curiosity. We start coloring within the lines of what we know.

The Bonnie Bishoff class I hosted last weekend put a bunch of us back in touch with something new and made us feel full of possibility again. Come on over and learn how to stay curious.