Asymmetrical Matchmaking
May 26, 2019
Inspirational Art
What earring camp of design are you in? Do you always make earrings that match, or do you occasionally create a mismatched pair? Or are you one of those rare birds that abhors the symmetry of a matched pair and avoids it completely? I have lately come to the conclusions that I am a bit tired of matching earring. I couldn’t say why but I’ve started grabbing just one of two different pairs and wearing those as a set. My decisions, however, are not random. I have a lot of earrings with similar designs or techniques and I choose the new pairing with an eye to there being some kind of recognizable connection between the newly partnered set because recognizable connection is what makes a pair of earrings a match.
Design is all about making connections for the viewer of the work. It’s about developing a relationship physically, visually, or conceptually between the elements of an item (or set) so that people see the work as cohesive and intentional. That doesn’t mean that everything needs to literally match or mirror, as it is often done with earrings. People seem to think earrings in a pair need to match unless you’re going for some funky or edgy aesthetic.
However, I’d like to show you that earrings can be created unmatched or asymmetrical and still look contemporary, sophisticated, or otherwise just fabulous. There is a whole range of things you can do to throw off the symmetry between a pair of earrings. It can be subtle like a color change or rearrangement of the same elements, or it can be extreme like a size or visual weight difference. Regardless of the chosen differences, the earrings in a well-designed unmatched set will feel related in some fashion, often having several matching elements but not symmetry between them but it could also be that they are complete opposites or are unrelated visually but are grouped in our mind through common concepts. Let’s go on and I’ll explain.
Creative Match Making
Let’s start with subtle mismatching in our matchmaking of earrings. This can be done by changing just one aspect. Color is easy to change up, but it can also get complicated as there are characteristics of color itself that need to be matched to make two different colors work together such as saturation and value. If you have a great grasp of color, then try that out. Otherwise, you might start with something a little more straightforward like size, shape, or texture.
Here is a brilliant example by Bettina Welker. These earrings are sophisticated but relatively simple in design. They get a boost of energy by the simple but discordant change of texture in the pair.
Placement is also an easy way to throw they symmetry off while keeping the same visual weight and size, aspects that can help ensure the earrings look like they belong together. This pair from Jagna Birecka does just that in a very simple way. She just turned the first order of strung elements upside down for the second earring. The fact that both end elements are round makes the changeup not quite as jarring or wonky as it could be while still being immediately noticeable.
When the color palette and primary shapes are the same, it really doesn’t matter where the elements land on an earring. If the color palette feels the same and some other big design elements such as shape and size are equivalent, you can change up the placement of the pattern and the balance of color between the pair and they will look quite matched and sophisticated. This set by Nikolina Ortzan is a great example of that. She uses the same set of colors in each earring (and the pendant) and has nothing but circular shapes so you might not even notice that they are not the same but you certainly feel the energy the disparity exudes.
If you like this kind of mismatch, peruse through Nikolina’s Flickr photostream. She employs this approach quite a lot and very successfully.
Concepts, not just visual elements, can create the connected relationship between the pair in an earring set. It was hard to find really great sets in polymer (it’s not like people are hash tagging #ConceptuallyMishmatchedPolymerEarrings on Instagram) so let me demonstrate conceptual relationships with a couple of other materials.
For instance, the classic Moon and Sun icons are easily recognized as related and are often used in jewelry. In this enamel and gem set pair by Diego Percossi Papi, the designer also ensured a recognizable relationship by using the same style and types details. The curved and very pointed ends of the moon echo the wavy and very pointed ends of the sun. The colors and materials used also remain consistent between the two. There is also a consideration of balance. Even though they are visually quite different forms, they feel equal. As Diego puts it. “The moon is longer to compensate for the sun that weighs more in color and size. The sun would be much more invasive, with its large areas of enamel, which is a form of balance and respect for the moon.”
The great thing about conceptual relationships is that you can really stretch the differences visually and have few, if any, commonalities between the two earrings if the concept is strong. Take this xylophone and its hammer. We know they belong together, that they come as a set so the instrument can be played and so they “match” conceptually. These cute fabricated earrings by Candyflaps and Sprinkles are made from vintage xylophone parts, and can still be played!
Combine conceptual images and strong design elements and it might take a second for people to realize that they are unmatched. Luann Udell’s Shaman Mask earrings are the same size and shape and are both faux ivory and well as being face masks, However, the faces have different expressions and shading. They are similar enough in how they are rendered and in what they are to give them a strong relationship on top of the already strong connection in shape.
You can also develop a relationship between two different earrings when they are two halves of one thing, such as this scene that spans the pair of polymer earrings created by Tishaia. Each earring is well composed on its own but creates a little scene when side by side. She has more obvious halves too which you can find on her Instagram page. I just thought this one was gorgeously done. 
Mix and Match
Okay … ready to mismatch some earring sets? Isn’t it just great to give yourself permission to go unmatched?
Understanding that earrings in a set should have some commonality, you can easily create new sets, maybe even from elements you already have. Pull out your box or bin or drawer of unused elements and start mixing and matching. Lay out beads and other pieces in sets when you find elements that have at least a couple of matching or related color palettes, shapes, sizes, or other design elements and see how you like them as earring pairs. I bet you’ll find at least a few. You can strengthen their connection by using the same spacer beads, dangles and/or findings in the final construction of the earrings. Lay these options out and see what you come up with.
You can even take the beads that are alike and change up the spacers and findings to give them some of that asymmetrical energy. Dangles are particularly effective. You can even add dangles to just one side, like Valeria of Jewellry for World on Etsy does here.
If you want to change up your findings, learning to make your own unique ear wires is a great place to start mixing it up. Here is an easy tutorial from Janet Liu of Crystals and Clay, with 5 designs to get you jumpstarted on creating your own ear wires or it might be a good refresher if you haven’t done it in a while.
For Love of Hot Water
Who is tired of hearing about my house drama? I think I am! This week we lost the use of our one working shower when something got sucked into the hot water line and killed the old show faucet. The glamping quickly turned into a more standard camping experience as running water and showers were absent most of the week. Luckily, we have family nearby so there were trips made just for showers!
On a positive note, we are also now in the “putting things back together” stage. This past week was all running pipes and gas lines and new electrical in the walls and attic. Nothing photo worthy. But, whew! Nice to be past the destruction phase. We get to start drywalling next week. Very exciting!
Yesterday was the first truly nice day since this all started. High of 73F and sunny! Much time was spent out in the yard. But today we have a high of 58F and its spitting rain. The wildly varying temperature range reminds me of Colorado (where we’d say “Don’t like the weather? Wait 15 minutes.”) who just got walloped by a winter storm this past week. Weather is just being funky this year. Is it out of whack where you are too?
Well, I hope that, regardless of the weather, you have time to hit the studio to mismatch and have fun trying out earring combinations. Or just getting time to play. For my US readers, enjoy your family and friends on this Memorial Day and take a little time out to remember the folks who gave their lives defending and fighting for us and for others around the globe. Have a great coming week!
Simply Stunning
May 19, 2019
Inspirational Art, Technique tutorials, The Polymer Arts magazine news
Tanya Mayorova
Given the choice, would you create a necklace that was easy and quick to make and was still stunning, or would you explore an unknown technique with an unknown outcome that might take hours or days? For some of you, the answer may be complicated because you like to explore and you don’t even question how long it will take or whether you will be successful because you just want to see what material can do. I get that. That’s pretty much how I approach what I do. Not that I wouldn’t mind some of my explorations being quick and easy and more often successful than not. Being challenged and failing, though, are absolutely necessary parts of creating art but that doesn’t mean that everything we make should be frustrating and difficult.
I think, by default, we all gravitate toward the easy option when given a clear-cut choice. Easy means less frustration, less room for error, and less time involved but it can also be considered a bad choice. And I’m not just talking about the creative process. For instance, you might grab a paper plate instead of one that you have to wash, or you toss your groceries in a plastic bag provided by the store rather than bringing in your own reusable one. Those examples highlight the reason for our environmental issues right now, our desire for ease and convenience being at the root of our environmental tragedies. So, yes, taking the easy route can sometimes have a negative effect that that’s not always true. There is nothing wrong with choosing the easiest route to drive home or having yoga pants and a T-shirt as your default attire when not at work. And some very easy things are actually better. Fruit and a boiled egg for breakfast is a lot easier than making pancakes and bacon and is better for you too. And when creating your polymer components, simple techniques and forms are often not only an efficient way to create and express yourself but they allow you to concentrate on composition, contrast, form, and other design elements rather than getting you wrapped up in technique.
With social media and our online access to so much artwork, I think our minds are saturated with certain ideas about what we should be creating and, because of that, we may have a hard time finding our own voice or we may have an unconscious sense of how pieces should look or be put together rather than finding a look of our own. Or we are romanced by gorgeous, complex pieces so we try to make our work more complex as well without knowing if simple elements may be very thing we need to do or say what we want.
Part of the problem comes from the idea that simple and easy means boring. But it certainly doesn’t have to be. To illustrate this, I’d like to look at beads today. In polymer jewelry, the bead is the most basic element you work with. The idea of a bead encompasses all types of forms though, from the simple round bead to complex sculpted and layered mixed-media elements. But let’s explore the more classic idea of a bead, as a single element that is repeated in some fashion in a piece of adornment and let’s see how you might create easy beads that are anything but basic and boring.
A little note … Some of you long time polymer enthusiasts out there may recognize a few of these pieces as several were widely circulated back when but, even if you’ve seen these before, look at them with new eyes and see if some familiar techniques but unused techniques aren’t worth a revisit now. You’ll approach them differently than you did 5 or 10 years ago, and you never know what serendipitous discovery might be unearthed.
Beads Beyond the Basic
Round beads are, of course, the most common bead form and are a classic that are always great for showing off canes, color, and surface design. Still, round beads can get pretty complicated, one, because it can be difficult to make them perfectly round, and secondly, because to keep them from being boring often leads us to add complexity in the color scheme or how the surface is treated. But what if you took your round bead and just worked on the form? Go ahead … grab some clay, make a rough round bead, and then start messing with the form. Pinch it, press it, pull it, or roll it into a variation on a round bead or cure and carve it.
Genevieve Williamson started out with a round bead to create these side textured chunky disks. Just look at the variation here plus I bet you can think up a few other ways to quickly and easily change them up with different clays, inclusions, or texturing of the sides.
Tube beads can be a tad tricky, primarily when it comes to creating the hole for stringing them. An extruder with a core adapter makes the job much easier but you can also create easy, attractive, and unique tube beads from any surface treated clay sheet simply by wrapping a strip around a tube of your choosing. Here’s a whole selection by Tonya Mayorova who went really wide with her bead openings. As you can see, all kind of surface treatments adapt well to these wide tube beads, from mosaics like you see on the bottom of the stack, to carved, impressed, mokume gane, and seed bead wrapped. The beads here are all similar in width but she uses the same approach with skinnier varieties such as in the necklace that opens this post.
Tanya doesn’t have a tutorial posted for this, but I can help you with that:
- Pick a favorite surface treatment to create a sheet of clay with and then wrap the sheet around anything that can go in the oven. I keep a few pieces of aluminum and copper tubing for just such projects. Make sure the pieces are straight and have unobstructed lengths so beads can slide off after curing.
- Wrap the clay around the tube until the clay sheet overlaps then cut down through the length of the overlapping clay and then remove the excess clay.
- Carefully blend the seam where the ends meet.
- If the clay sheet has a smooth and even surface, you can lay it on the worksurface and, using a tissue blade, let it roll crosswise under the blade ‘s edge to cut each individual bead cut. Then just cure the stack as is.
- Alternately, you can cure just after you blend the seam then cut the beads off it with a craft knife or slide it off the rod and use a jeweler’s saw to cut your beads.
- You can string your tubes on multiple strands of stringing materials such as cording or leather thongs, a selection of various colored embroidery thread, colored Tigers tail, ribbon, etc.
Tanya has even more variations of this idea ready for your perusal on her Flickr photostream here. She also recently agreed to create a feature tutorial for Issue #3 of The Polymer Studio so be sure to subscribe or keep up your subscription to the magazine to get that beautiful project.
The beads below also require just a sheet of treated clay. These are similar to a popular paper bead technique you may have seen as well. They start with a sheet cut into narrow, long triangles that are then rolled up, starting with the wide end so that each overlap leaves part of the surface of the lower layer visible. It works with any sheet of polymer, treated or untreated, textured or not.
I love how Margit Bohmer keeps the triangles, created from a mokume gane sheet, really narrow so that the beads are nearly as big in diameter as they are wide. There is still plenty of surface showing but they blend into each other because the narrow bead doesn’t angle away as much at the point where they touch. As you likely already know, the longer the bead, the more space you’ll see between the bottom edges of the bead ends. These rolled up beads are also angled on their ends which can make them sit askew but the shallower the angle (like on these narrower beads) the more neatly they line up.
Margit has created the longer beads as well so you can compare them here or just look through her Flickr photostream to see what you like better. And if you want a full polymer tutorial on these types of beads, check out Emma Ralph’s classic tutorial here.
Another, maybe even easier, way to use sheeted clay for beads is to just roll up flat sections of clay without overlapping, in a loose, freeform way. This works really nicely with an organic treatment or texture. Just look at how lovely these wrapped textured beads are. They are simply flat sections of polymer impressed on a handmade texture plate and curled up on an angle.
These are created by Rebekah Payne who generously posted a tutorial here on how to make them.
A similar concept can be employed with snakes of clay. Just roll out or extrude lengths of solid, marbled, mica shift (see this post from earlier this month) or striped polymer and then wrap the strands up on a skewer, long thin knitting needle, or other thin rod and cure. You’ll end up with coiled beads like these created by Emma Todd, below..
You can also roll the beads, after wrapping them up, back and forth under an acrylic block or other small tile to level the strands, creating a smooth bead surface. Don’t use the rod to roll the bead as it will act like a rolling pin on the inside of it and widen the stringing hole. Unless you want that. You can also take them off the rod and gently press their length between thumb and forefinger to compress the coils a bit more and make flat ended cylindrical beads.
The interior of clay beads have a lot of hidden potential too, and they can so easily and quickly be revealed by just cutting them open. Here is my all-time favorite example of creating stunning beads by cutting the form. These fabulous beads are by Desiree McCrorey. Click the image to see her tutorial for this. Be sure to check out the beads she makes from the cut scraps at the end too!
Not only can you create simple yet complex looking beads by cutting stacks, you can use this technique with old canes as well. See Desiree’s tutorial for the same beads using canes here. And look around the site for other great tutorials. These are all older tutorials, but timeless techniques.
Beads Away!
The examples above are all easy to make, don’t take much time, and allow for your own take on composition, contrast, texturing, etc. So, I would like to suggest that you pick a couple you like and see if you can sneak in sometime today or this coming week to try them out to see which, if any, simple but expressive beads suit you.
There are also some publications you might want to check out if you are on a bead making bender or feel you will be after all this.
- My favorite polymer bead book is Carol Blackburn’s Making Polymer Clay Beads. There are beads for all levels of clayers and lots of jumping off points for those who like to explore.
- Although these get a bit more complex, the beads in Grant Diffendaffer’s book, Polymer Clay Beads are just stunning and there are so many tips in this book.
- If you really just want to try some new surface treatments or get other ideas for changing up your own bead ideas, Marie Segal’s, The Polymer Clay Artist’s Guide, is such a thorough exploration of techniques. It’s my go to book for creative brainstorming on polymer treatments.
- Of course, there are tons of ideas in The Polymer Studio and, especially for the more exploratory folks, in the back issues of The Polymer Arts. Grab a few of these in print or digital and let serendipity lead you into new creative territory. By the way, about 65% of The Polymer Arts issues are still available in print but quite a few are about to sell out completely so if you like your material in print, snatch them up while I still have them.
- For further inspiration in the form of eye-candy, pick up your copy of Polymer Journeys 2016 and/or 2019. Both are just brimming with ideas of all kinds. If you need a copy, get them on the website here.
Holes
Our foreman, standing guard at the pit to our main drain line in our front yard … there’s another guy down there!
For those of you mildly entertained by the situation here at Tenth Muse central, all I have to report is, well, holes. I counted 8 points of egress big enough for the entry of adventurous birds or, in 2 cases, an adventurous racoon, thanks to the workers punching through our walls for new plumbing and a new electrical panel. Its kind of unnerving to stand in the middle of one’s house and see so many wide-open entries into the space.
There are also some deep holes! The nearly 3 foot deep hole in the master bath is big enough for a couple suitcases of cash (like I have enough cash even in single dollar bills to fill a couple suitcases, not after all this work!) but the 7 foot deep one in the front yard is ready for hiding bodies. Or maybe just my entire stash of failed art projects. That craziness has us now investigating xeriscaping and ground cover plants because between the trench and the well at the end of it (and all the dug up soil covering the area around it), that grass ain’t coming back. It didn’t grow well there anyways. So now we are plant shopping. I never much liked shopping before (unless if was for art materials!) but, man, am I getting burned out on that particular activity. The shopping part, not the plants. I’ve been enjoying my plants, with all the spring flowers in bloom. The garden has been my escape from all the chaos and noise!
However, in all this, I have managed to clear up the studio table and started working on new stuff! It’s amazing what can happen when you don’t have distracting chores like housecleaning (although I miss having a house to clean!) Keep an eye on my personal Instagram page for new pieces and, hopefully, new poetry to accompany it. Find me @thesagearts
Now off to enjoy a rare cool and rainy Sunday. I hope you have a beautiful Sunday to relax in and a great week ahead!
Tile Talk
May 12, 2019
Inspirational Art
Do you ever stop to ask yourself if what you create makes you happy? It seems like a silly question since creating is usually passion driven so being able to feed that passion should make you happy, right? But have you ever found yourself creating something because you believe it is the kind of thing other people would like but later realize that you don’t enjoying making it?
I found that happened a lot when I was a selling artist. You get wrapped up in what you think the market would want, what you think will sell best at the next show, and you’d be just making things for the money and not because it’s what you want to make. Other times we think that in a particular material, like polymer clay, it is best used for certain forms such as jewelry and home decor. But as we all know, polymer can do almost anything and yet 85% of it being created and shared online is jewelry. Jewelry is pretty fun stuff to make, sure, but if you enjoy polymer, just keep in mind you don’t have to make jewelry.
I myself have been moving away from jewelry. A pendant or pair of earrings are oftentimes still the best items to create to show off a polymer technique for a magazine article or tutorial but more and more, I create objects without an end goal in mind and am really enjoying just making little objects and samples of techniques. Last year, I started to see patterns and connections between them and eventually started putting them in shadow boxes. You can see an example of one of my “specimen” boxes in the latest Polymer Journeys book, if you’re curious. I’m also trying to devise a class for doing it. It’s so much fun!
But when I have to create jewelry because I am vetting an article for the magazine or want to make a gift, I have lately found that I don’t look forward to the engineering of it – figuring out how it is going to hang, what stringing material will work best, what findings I need, as well as worrying about comfort and durability. I find I don’t want to think about those things when I create and it’s not out of some kind of laziness, it’s just not what I want to spend my mental and creative energy on, and I’m good with that. I just really want to follow creative paths that make me happy right now.
To that end (and because I’ve spent so much time in tile stores lately), I’ve decided I might just focus on tiles for a while. They are a very freeing form. A tile is just a canvas for 3D materials. You can do whatever you want on them. You can make them any size, any shape, and can attach whatever you want or attack it however you want. I think we really should all give ourselves the freedom to play with this form, to let ourselves be free to create from the heart with a material we love. At the end of a session of tile making, you may find you are really looking forward to creating necklaces or making beads or covering vases. But I am going to suggest you give a tile a try here and there to just let yourself create freely. Doing this can help with your designs in other forms.
To that end, of course, I’m going to share some tiles this weekend. I am going to share a lot of non-polymer ones because I think, if you’ve spent any time online, you’ve probably seen your share of polymer tiles these last few years, especially with the Fimo 50 year challenge a couple of years back and with the common inches exchanges (inches are just tiny tiles). So, I’ve got a quite a mix for you but it is all art that can translate to polymer even if it is in another material.
Laying it All Out
The opening image of this post is a photo from a class conducted by Laurie Mika. She is well-known for her colorful and intricate collage/mosaic pieces which, by the way, she teaches at various events. This collection of student work was from a polymer clay tapestry class she taught at the SAMA (Society of American Mosaic Artists) conference in Nashville just a few of weeks ago. They are all just lovely. There is no high-end technical skill needed to put these types of things together which makes them ideal for exploring color and texture and just letting yourself go. (You can check Laurie’s workshop schedule on her website.)
Jael Thorp caught my eye some years back with her “clay doodles”, including the one below. I thought they looked like zentangles for clayers. Can you imagine the flow state she must’ve been in to create this? You can just get so completely lost in this kind of work and that is a big part of why people find tiles such a wonderful creative outlet.
Check out this post with her various doodles from some years back. She went on to refine her technique, making beautiful beads and home decor with the same type of application. You can find them on her Flickr photostream.
Let’s move from polymer to ceramics now. It is a rare thing in ceramics that can’t be replicated in some fashion in polymer so I find ceramic art quite inspiring. Here is one of my favorite tile makers in ceramics, Chris Gryder, who has gone a bit more three-dimensional of late but his tile compositions are timeless.
In this composition, each tile is its own separate piece but he’s connected them all with these lines that he creates through the grid of tiles. So, really, you can make a whole bunch of tiles without worrying about what they’re going to end up as, and then, if you want to put them together as a composition because they have a similar or complementary set of color palettes, textures, or motifs, you can use lines that flow throughout to visually connect them for a larger composite composition. This approach would allow you to just make tiles as the muse directs and then you can later make them into a larger wall piece.
If you like this piece, go browse through his website or his Instagram page for more fantastic inspiring wall compositions in tile.
Keep in mind, just because tiles start out flat, they are not two-dimensional and you can create extremely three-dimensional pieces on them. Here’s one example with some very organic forms and textures created by Lauren Blakey, another ceramic artist.
And here’s another three-dimensional example in glass by Shayna Leib.
As you can see, tile work is open to all types of materials so keep that in mind as you sit down to tile. Mix in anything that your heart and muse desires. Mix and match mediums, embed oddball trinkets you’ve kept for, as yet, unknown reasons, and just keep an open mind.
After pulling these examples for you, I realized that all the examples are squares here. You don’t have to create square tiles to play with but that is the more common form. However, if you’re not feeling square, try a free form shape or an oblong one or maybe, because today is Mother’s Day, create a big heart for all the mothers out there. Happy Mother’s Day to all you amazing women!
Here’s a heart from Tina Ruppert of Wisecrackin’ Mosaics on Etsy. Pick a favorite shape and a bunch of canes or other scraps of clay and you can do something along these lines as well.
Getting Squared Away
I’m going to leave you with these thoughts and hopefully some curiosity about playing around with a tile or two, in whatever form and techniques interest you. If you need some jumpstart tutorials, here are a few places you can go:
Sara Evans has a video about her tile making process here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FAxYwgJfLo
If you want to do something tile like but still want it to be something functional when done, maybe you would like this polymer clay tile box tutorial –
https://mermaidsden.com/blog/2015/02/12/polymer-clay-tile-box
Or have fun with one of our true masters of polymer clay tiles, Chris Kapono, with her very detailed and yet tremendously fun tile project in the Polymer Arts Projects book which you can purchase and download digitally if you need it immediately or order the print edition from our website.
I opened with a discussion about doing what makes you happy and hope it gives you some food for thought. If you want to hear a couple of transformative stories in that vein, please be sure to get your copy of The Polymer Studio Issue #2, recently released, which starts and ends with stories about finding one’s happy place with one about Christine Dumont’s studio complete with a visual tour, and the other about Donna Greenberg’s focus moving from jewelry to large wall art. Check out the Issue #2 Sampler if you haven’t seen the new issues yet.
We’re daily trying to find are happy place over here as our house has continued to be demolished more and more, beyond what we (or our contractor) expected even. Old plumbing can be a tricky thing! If it would just warm up here, it wouldn’t be so bad. A cold Southern California in May is just weird.
I’d share progress shots of the house but it’s pretty much just down to studs and busted up concrete floors. Oh… And a large trench across the whole of the front yard for a new drain line. I’m thinking about making it into a moat. Like a habitrail (if you remember those hamster houses) for our pond fish. They could just swim circles around the house! Okay, probably not but gotta have fun with all this bedlam, even if it’s just dreaming up nonsense like that!
I hope you all have a wonderful Sunday and Mother’s Day! I’m off to have mimosas with the family’s fabulous females myself! Enjoy the day and your coming week!
Flower Powered Polymer
May 5, 2019
Inspirational Art
Kathy McCurry, Bearded Sadie
Have you ever walked outside and been assaulted by a cloud of butterflies? Sounds like something that might happen in a dream, right? But it actually is happening here in Southern California. The first wave came through a month ago as Painted Lady butterflies traveled north on their annual migration only this time there were many more than usual, supported by the crazy wildflower bloom that we have going on out here. Between a very heavy rainy season and all the fires around here, the ground has been very fertile and supportive of tons and tons of mustard flowers, orange poppies, and purple lupines. So now, the next generation of butterflies, laid here by the first migratory wave, have grown, transformed, and are continuing the migration, with streams of them cavorting down the hills, rolling through backyards, and, strangely enough, traveling in clouds down the streets, following the asphalt rivers
So, of course, I had to get out in it (and out of the house) yesterday and now my head is full of flowers and butterflies. Which is weird for me. Although I love these fascinating and colorful gems of nature, they aren’t usually the thing that I turned to, especially when it comes to artwork. But, with flowers on the mind, I sat down to drum up something lovely to show you this week and came up with all kinds of polymer flowers, but not quite what you’d expect.
Let’s look at how people are switching up this most common and enduring subject for artistic inspiration.
Flower Power
first of all, if you read last week’s blog, you know I wanted to focus on mica shift techniques on my own studio table this past week and challenged you all to try a little yourselves. Well, I did get started but it was a tough week for getting things done. However, that post initiated a number of experimentations in a slew of other artist’s studios as well. It does seem that a majority of people are still in the experimentation stage so I will hold off sharing any results until we all have something more complete.
What did happen though, was a lot of online conversations as people shared their work. One such online chat was with Kathy McCurry, one of our most creative floral polymer artists. I am really excited to see what she comes up within mica shift for her flowers as they are already so intriguing. Kathy creates pieces that could be nothing else but flowers yet they are like nothing you ever have, or ever well, see on this earth. They are eye-catching, colorful, shimmery, and crazy exotic looking, as you can see in her piece opening this post and the one below. Being Cinco de Mayo today, I thought these Fiesta flowers would be an apropos example.
It is always hard to pick just one or two pictures from a talented artist like this so please to click over to her website to see more of her work if you’ve not seen it before. You can also find her featured in Polymer Journeys 2019, and she’ll be in Issue #3 of The Polymer Studio. with a bit of a personal story. You can buy the book or subscribe to the magazine (Issue #2 was released last week and is ready to ship if you need a copy!) on the website.
Other creative and beautiful, yet not-found-in-nature flowers made in polymer can be found in the studio of Ann Duncan-Hlavach. Ann has a habit of making up her own patterns for petals from just about any source of inspiration besides actual flowers, resulting in some really delightful combinations.
Here is an ode to the Monarch butterfly (since butterflies started this, it seemed like I should bring them in here somewhere on this post), but in a rose shape. Don’t you love the translucent quality of the “wings”? The translucence glows when light hits it. This makes for truly stunning and unusual bouquets as you can see in a wedding set of hers that made it into Polymer Journeys 2019.
Just how else can you mix and match inspiration for flowers? Well, the possibilities are endless, and sometimes even frightening! But in a good way. There are few people who have taken the light and delicate nature of flowers and melded them with the far end of the spectrum quite like Anastasiya Khramina. Here carnivorous flora are at once beautiful and horrifying. I do have to wonder what inspired her to add vampiric teeth and a forceful tongue lolling out of her flowers’ centers. And yes, this is not a one-off thing for her. Most of her posted creations are sharp-teethed flowers. I posted one of her pieces a year or so ago and it was one of the most viewed post of that year. I guess us humans will always be drawn by beauty, especially when it is combined with what scares us.
Now, if you really would prefer to go the more traditional way and have realistic looking flowers for adornment, you can do so while still taking it up a notch and showing up mother nature herself. Just come up with a color combination and arrangement nature hasn’t quite gotten around to creating. See how Vera of Etsy’s Handmade Blossoms does it … in pastels or a full and bright rainbow.
But, perhaps you, like me, are not so much into the flowers but you do love the shapes and forms of them with their layers or rows of petals, and the balanced swirling repetition of their arrangement. Those formations do not only come in flowers. Albina Asadullina popped an extremely realistic succulent onto the focal point of the pendant instead of a flower as one might expect. It has a bit more substance and so is not quite as delicate looking as most flowers but it visually has the same effect for the piece.
Moving on From Flowers
To quickly wrap this up, I’m going to let you do further research as you are inspired. I am utterly exhausted by a long arduous week of decision-making, further house rearranging, and trying to keep the dust at bay. Here I am in the middle of what once was my kitchen, contemplating the problem plumbing which instigated this whole thing. I now spend my entire day in my studio (and my nights this week since I have to sleep here for the time being too!) which wouldn’t be that abnormal or too bad if the family didn’t all have to retreat here too when they are home as it’s still a bit nippy outside. We are making the most of it and looking on it as a challenging adventure. Now I just need to figure out how to get work done amidst this all!
The Polymer Studio, Issue #2 … click the image to see a sampler edition
Get oodles of inspiration and have fun with the many intriguing projects, artist interviews, studio tours and other tidbits in the latest issue of The Polymer Studio. Click here to see a sampler of it.
Looking for your already purchased copy?
If you are due a digital edition, the access emails went out on Tuesday but if you didn’t see yours, check your junk mail folders or go to your account where you can access it. You can also write Sydney, my keeper of lists, from there if you have questions.
Print editions of the new issue went to the post office Wednesday directly from the printer if you were subscribed or pre-ordered before April 22nd. My shipment has been delayed but I should have them Tuesday so recent orders will go out then from here.
I hope you all have a wonderful week full of flowers, butterflies, and lots of not-so-challenging adventures!
What earring camp of design are you in? Do you always make earrings that match, or do you occasionally create a mismatched pair? Or are you one of those rare birds that abhors the symmetry of a matched pair and avoids it completely? I have lately come to the conclusions that I am a bit tired of matching earring. I couldn’t say why but I’ve started grabbing just one of two different pairs and wearing those as a set. My decisions, however, are not random. I have a lot of earrings with similar designs or techniques and I choose the new pairing with an eye to there being some kind of recognizable connection between the newly partnered set because recognizable connection is what makes a pair of earrings a match.
Design is all about making connections for the viewer of the work. It’s about developing a relationship physically, visually, or conceptually between the elements of an item (or set) so that people see the work as cohesive and intentional. That doesn’t mean that everything needs to literally match or mirror, as it is often done with earrings. People seem to think earrings in a pair need to match unless you’re going for some funky or edgy aesthetic.
However, I’d like to show you that earrings can be created unmatched or asymmetrical and still look contemporary, sophisticated, or otherwise just fabulous. There is a whole range of things you can do to throw off the symmetry between a pair of earrings. It can be subtle like a color change or rearrangement of the same elements, or it can be extreme like a size or visual weight difference. Regardless of the chosen differences, the earrings in a well-designed unmatched set will feel related in some fashion, often having several matching elements but not symmetry between them but it could also be that they are complete opposites or are unrelated visually but are grouped in our mind through common concepts. Let’s go on and I’ll explain.
Creative Match Making
Let’s start with subtle mismatching in our matchmaking of earrings. This can be done by changing just one aspect. Color is easy to change up, but it can also get complicated as there are characteristics of color itself that need to be matched to make two different colors work together such as saturation and value. If you have a great grasp of color, then try that out. Otherwise, you might start with something a little more straightforward like size, shape, or texture.
Here is a brilliant example by Bettina Welker. These earrings are sophisticated but relatively simple in design. They get a boost of energy by the simple but discordant change of texture in the pair.
Placement is also an easy way to throw they symmetry off while keeping the same visual weight and size, aspects that can help ensure the earrings look like they belong together. This pair from Jagna Birecka does just that in a very simple way. She just turned the first order of strung elements upside down for the second earring. The fact that both end elements are round makes the changeup not quite as jarring or wonky as it could be while still being immediately noticeable.
When the color palette and primary shapes are the same, it really doesn’t matter where the elements land on an earring. If the color palette feels the same and some other big design elements such as shape and size are equivalent, you can change up the placement of the pattern and the balance of color between the pair and they will look quite matched and sophisticated. This set by Nikolina Ortzan is a great example of that. She uses the same set of colors in each earring (and the pendant) and has nothing but circular shapes so you might not even notice that they are not the same but you certainly feel the energy the disparity exudes.
If you like this kind of mismatch, peruse through Nikolina’s Flickr photostream. She employs this approach quite a lot and very successfully.
Concepts, not just visual elements, can create the connected relationship between the pair in an earring set. It was hard to find really great sets in polymer (it’s not like people are hash tagging #ConceptuallyMishmatchedPolymerEarrings on Instagram) so let me demonstrate conceptual relationships with a couple of other materials.
For instance, the classic Moon and Sun icons are easily recognized as related and are often used in jewelry. In this enamel and gem set pair by Diego Percossi Papi, the designer also ensured a recognizable relationship by using the same style and types details. The curved and very pointed ends of the moon echo the wavy and very pointed ends of the sun. The colors and materials used also remain consistent between the two. There is also a consideration of balance. Even though they are visually quite different forms, they feel equal. As Diego puts it. “The moon is longer to compensate for the sun that weighs more in color and size. The sun would be much more invasive, with its large areas of enamel, which is a form of balance and respect for the moon.”
The great thing about conceptual relationships is that you can really stretch the differences visually and have few, if any, commonalities between the two earrings if the concept is strong. Take this xylophone and its hammer. We know they belong together, that they come as a set so the instrument can be played and so they “match” conceptually. These cute fabricated earrings by Candyflaps and Sprinkles are made from vintage xylophone parts, and can still be played!
Combine conceptual images and strong design elements and it might take a second for people to realize that they are unmatched. Luann Udell’s Shaman Mask earrings are the same size and shape and are both faux ivory and well as being face masks, However, the faces have different expressions and shading. They are similar enough in how they are rendered and in what they are to give them a strong relationship on top of the already strong connection in shape.
You can also develop a relationship between two different earrings when they are two halves of one thing, such as this scene that spans the pair of polymer earrings created by Tishaia. Each earring is well composed on its own but creates a little scene when side by side. She has more obvious halves too which you can find on her Instagram page. I just thought this one was gorgeously done.
Mix and Match
Okay … ready to mismatch some earring sets? Isn’t it just great to give yourself permission to go unmatched?
Understanding that earrings in a set should have some commonality, you can easily create new sets, maybe even from elements you already have. Pull out your box or bin or drawer of unused elements and start mixing and matching. Lay out beads and other pieces in sets when you find elements that have at least a couple of matching or related color palettes, shapes, sizes, or other design elements and see how you like them as earring pairs. I bet you’ll find at least a few. You can strengthen their connection by using the same spacer beads, dangles and/or findings in the final construction of the earrings. Lay these options out and see what you come up with.
You can even take the beads that are alike and change up the spacers and findings to give them some of that asymmetrical energy. Dangles are particularly effective. You can even add dangles to just one side, like Valeria of Jewellry for World on Etsy does here.
If you want to change up your findings, learning to make your own unique ear wires is a great place to start mixing it up. Here is an easy tutorial from Janet Liu of Crystals and Clay, with 5 designs to get you jumpstarted on creating your own ear wires or it might be a good refresher if you haven’t done it in a while.
For Love of Hot Water
Who is tired of hearing about my house drama? I think I am! This week we lost the use of our one working shower when something got sucked into the hot water line and killed the old show faucet. The glamping quickly turned into a more standard camping experience as running water and showers were absent most of the week. Luckily, we have family nearby so there were trips made just for showers!
On a positive note, we are also now in the “putting things back together” stage. This past week was all running pipes and gas lines and new electrical in the walls and attic. Nothing photo worthy. But, whew! Nice to be past the destruction phase. We get to start drywalling next week. Very exciting!
Yesterday was the first truly nice day since this all started. High of 73F and sunny! Much time was spent out in the yard. But today we have a high of 58F and its spitting rain. The wildly varying temperature range reminds me of Colorado (where we’d say “Don’t like the weather? Wait 15 minutes.”) who just got walloped by a winter storm this past week. Weather is just being funky this year. Is it out of whack where you are too?
Well, I hope that, regardless of the weather, you have time to hit the studio to mismatch and have fun trying out earring combinations. Or just getting time to play. For my US readers, enjoy your family and friends on this Memorial Day and take a little time out to remember the folks who gave their lives defending and fighting for us and for others around the globe. Have a great coming week!
Read More
Tanya Mayorova
Given the choice, would you create a necklace that was easy and quick to make and was still stunning, or would you explore an unknown technique with an unknown outcome that might take hours or days? For some of you, the answer may be complicated because you like to explore and you don’t even question how long it will take or whether you will be successful because you just want to see what material can do. I get that. That’s pretty much how I approach what I do. Not that I wouldn’t mind some of my explorations being quick and easy and more often successful than not. Being challenged and failing, though, are absolutely necessary parts of creating art but that doesn’t mean that everything we make should be frustrating and difficult.
I think, by default, we all gravitate toward the easy option when given a clear-cut choice. Easy means less frustration, less room for error, and less time involved but it can also be considered a bad choice. And I’m not just talking about the creative process. For instance, you might grab a paper plate instead of one that you have to wash, or you toss your groceries in a plastic bag provided by the store rather than bringing in your own reusable one. Those examples highlight the reason for our environmental issues right now, our desire for ease and convenience being at the root of our environmental tragedies. So, yes, taking the easy route can sometimes have a negative effect that that’s not always true. There is nothing wrong with choosing the easiest route to drive home or having yoga pants and a T-shirt as your default attire when not at work. And some very easy things are actually better. Fruit and a boiled egg for breakfast is a lot easier than making pancakes and bacon and is better for you too. And when creating your polymer components, simple techniques and forms are often not only an efficient way to create and express yourself but they allow you to concentrate on composition, contrast, form, and other design elements rather than getting you wrapped up in technique.
With social media and our online access to so much artwork, I think our minds are saturated with certain ideas about what we should be creating and, because of that, we may have a hard time finding our own voice or we may have an unconscious sense of how pieces should look or be put together rather than finding a look of our own. Or we are romanced by gorgeous, complex pieces so we try to make our work more complex as well without knowing if simple elements may be very thing we need to do or say what we want.
Part of the problem comes from the idea that simple and easy means boring. But it certainly doesn’t have to be. To illustrate this, I’d like to look at beads today. In polymer jewelry, the bead is the most basic element you work with. The idea of a bead encompasses all types of forms though, from the simple round bead to complex sculpted and layered mixed-media elements. But let’s explore the more classic idea of a bead, as a single element that is repeated in some fashion in a piece of adornment and let’s see how you might create easy beads that are anything but basic and boring.
A little note … Some of you long time polymer enthusiasts out there may recognize a few of these pieces as several were widely circulated back when but, even if you’ve seen these before, look at them with new eyes and see if some familiar techniques but unused techniques aren’t worth a revisit now. You’ll approach them differently than you did 5 or 10 years ago, and you never know what serendipitous discovery might be unearthed.
Beads Beyond the Basic
Round beads are, of course, the most common bead form and are a classic that are always great for showing off canes, color, and surface design. Still, round beads can get pretty complicated, one, because it can be difficult to make them perfectly round, and secondly, because to keep them from being boring often leads us to add complexity in the color scheme or how the surface is treated. But what if you took your round bead and just worked on the form? Go ahead … grab some clay, make a rough round bead, and then start messing with the form. Pinch it, press it, pull it, or roll it into a variation on a round bead or cure and carve it.
Genevieve Williamson started out with a round bead to create these side textured chunky disks. Just look at the variation here plus I bet you can think up a few other ways to quickly and easily change them up with different clays, inclusions, or texturing of the sides.
Tube beads can be a tad tricky, primarily when it comes to creating the hole for stringing them. An extruder with a core adapter makes the job much easier but you can also create easy, attractive, and unique tube beads from any surface treated clay sheet simply by wrapping a strip around a tube of your choosing. Here’s a whole selection by Tonya Mayorova who went really wide with her bead openings. As you can see, all kind of surface treatments adapt well to these wide tube beads, from mosaics like you see on the bottom of the stack, to carved, impressed, mokume gane, and seed bead wrapped. The beads here are all similar in width but she uses the same approach with skinnier varieties such as in the necklace that opens this post.
Tanya doesn’t have a tutorial posted for this, but I can help you with that:
- Pick a favorite surface treatment to create a sheet of clay with and then wrap the sheet around anything that can go in the oven. I keep a few pieces of aluminum and copper tubing for just such projects. Make sure the pieces are straight and have unobstructed lengths so beads can slide off after curing.
- Wrap the clay around the tube until the clay sheet overlaps then cut down through the length of the overlapping clay and then remove the excess clay.
- Carefully blend the seam where the ends meet.
- If the clay sheet has a smooth and even surface, you can lay it on the worksurface and, using a tissue blade, let it roll crosswise under the blade ‘s edge to cut each individual bead cut. Then just cure the stack as is.
- Alternately, you can cure just after you blend the seam then cut the beads off it with a craft knife or slide it off the rod and use a jeweler’s saw to cut your beads.
- You can string your tubes on multiple strands of stringing materials such as cording or leather thongs, a selection of various colored embroidery thread, colored Tigers tail, ribbon, etc.
Tanya has even more variations of this idea ready for your perusal on her Flickr photostream here. She also recently agreed to create a feature tutorial for Issue #3 of The Polymer Studio so be sure to subscribe or keep up your subscription to the magazine to get that beautiful project.
The beads below also require just a sheet of treated clay. These are similar to a popular paper bead technique you may have seen as well. They start with a sheet cut into narrow, long triangles that are then rolled up, starting with the wide end so that each overlap leaves part of the surface of the lower layer visible. It works with any sheet of polymer, treated or untreated, textured or not.
I love how Margit Bohmer keeps the triangles, created from a mokume gane sheet, really narrow so that the beads are nearly as big in diameter as they are wide. There is still plenty of surface showing but they blend into each other because the narrow bead doesn’t angle away as much at the point where they touch. As you likely already know, the longer the bead, the more space you’ll see between the bottom edges of the bead ends. These rolled up beads are also angled on their ends which can make them sit askew but the shallower the angle (like on these narrower beads) the more neatly they line up.
Margit has created the longer beads as well so you can compare them here or just look through her Flickr photostream to see what you like better. And if you want a full polymer tutorial on these types of beads, check out Emma Ralph’s classic tutorial here.
Another, maybe even easier, way to use sheeted clay for beads is to just roll up flat sections of clay without overlapping, in a loose, freeform way. This works really nicely with an organic treatment or texture. Just look at how lovely these wrapped textured beads are. They are simply flat sections of polymer impressed on a handmade texture plate and curled up on an angle.
These are created by Rebekah Payne who generously posted a tutorial here on how to make them.
A similar concept can be employed with snakes of clay. Just roll out or extrude lengths of solid, marbled, mica shift (see this post from earlier this month) or striped polymer and then wrap the strands up on a skewer, long thin knitting needle, or other thin rod and cure. You’ll end up with coiled beads like these created by Emma Todd, below..
You can also roll the beads, after wrapping them up, back and forth under an acrylic block or other small tile to level the strands, creating a smooth bead surface. Don’t use the rod to roll the bead as it will act like a rolling pin on the inside of it and widen the stringing hole. Unless you want that. You can also take them off the rod and gently press their length between thumb and forefinger to compress the coils a bit more and make flat ended cylindrical beads.
The interior of clay beads have a lot of hidden potential too, and they can so easily and quickly be revealed by just cutting them open. Here is my all-time favorite example of creating stunning beads by cutting the form. These fabulous beads are by Desiree McCrorey. Click the image to see her tutorial for this. Be sure to check out the beads she makes from the cut scraps at the end too!
Not only can you create simple yet complex looking beads by cutting stacks, you can use this technique with old canes as well. See Desiree’s tutorial for the same beads using canes here. And look around the site for other great tutorials. These are all older tutorials, but timeless techniques.
Beads Away!
The examples above are all easy to make, don’t take much time, and allow for your own take on composition, contrast, texturing, etc. So, I would like to suggest that you pick a couple you like and see if you can sneak in sometime today or this coming week to try them out to see which, if any, simple but expressive beads suit you.
There are also some publications you might want to check out if you are on a bead making bender or feel you will be after all this.
- My favorite polymer bead book is Carol Blackburn’s Making Polymer Clay Beads. There are beads for all levels of clayers and lots of jumping off points for those who like to explore.
- Although these get a bit more complex, the beads in Grant Diffendaffer’s book, Polymer Clay Beads are just stunning and there are so many tips in this book.
- If you really just want to try some new surface treatments or get other ideas for changing up your own bead ideas, Marie Segal’s, The Polymer Clay Artist’s Guide, is such a thorough exploration of techniques. It’s my go to book for creative brainstorming on polymer treatments.
- Of course, there are tons of ideas in The Polymer Studio and, especially for the more exploratory folks, in the back issues of The Polymer Arts. Grab a few of these in print or digital and let serendipity lead you into new creative territory. By the way, about 65% of The Polymer Arts issues are still available in print but quite a few are about to sell out completely so if you like your material in print, snatch them up while I still have them.
- For further inspiration in the form of eye-candy, pick up your copy of Polymer Journeys 2016 and/or 2019. Both are just brimming with ideas of all kinds. If you need a copy, get them on the website here.
Holes
Our foreman, standing guard at the pit to our main drain line in our front yard … there’s another guy down there!
For those of you mildly entertained by the situation here at Tenth Muse central, all I have to report is, well, holes. I counted 8 points of egress big enough for the entry of adventurous birds or, in 2 cases, an adventurous racoon, thanks to the workers punching through our walls for new plumbing and a new electrical panel. Its kind of unnerving to stand in the middle of one’s house and see so many wide-open entries into the space.
There are also some deep holes! The nearly 3 foot deep hole in the master bath is big enough for a couple suitcases of cash (like I have enough cash even in single dollar bills to fill a couple suitcases, not after all this work!) but the 7 foot deep one in the front yard is ready for hiding bodies. Or maybe just my entire stash of failed art projects. That craziness has us now investigating xeriscaping and ground cover plants because between the trench and the well at the end of it (and all the dug up soil covering the area around it), that grass ain’t coming back. It didn’t grow well there anyways. So now we are plant shopping. I never much liked shopping before (unless if was for art materials!) but, man, am I getting burned out on that particular activity. The shopping part, not the plants. I’ve been enjoying my plants, with all the spring flowers in bloom. The garden has been my escape from all the chaos and noise!
However, in all this, I have managed to clear up the studio table and started working on new stuff! It’s amazing what can happen when you don’t have distracting chores like housecleaning (although I miss having a house to clean!) Keep an eye on my personal Instagram page for new pieces and, hopefully, new poetry to accompany it. Find me @thesagearts
Now off to enjoy a rare cool and rainy Sunday. I hope you have a beautiful Sunday to relax in and a great week ahead!
Read MoreDo you ever stop to ask yourself if what you create makes you happy? It seems like a silly question since creating is usually passion driven so being able to feed that passion should make you happy, right? But have you ever found yourself creating something because you believe it is the kind of thing other people would like but later realize that you don’t enjoying making it?
I found that happened a lot when I was a selling artist. You get wrapped up in what you think the market would want, what you think will sell best at the next show, and you’d be just making things for the money and not because it’s what you want to make. Other times we think that in a particular material, like polymer clay, it is best used for certain forms such as jewelry and home decor. But as we all know, polymer can do almost anything and yet 85% of it being created and shared online is jewelry. Jewelry is pretty fun stuff to make, sure, but if you enjoy polymer, just keep in mind you don’t have to make jewelry.
I myself have been moving away from jewelry. A pendant or pair of earrings are oftentimes still the best items to create to show off a polymer technique for a magazine article or tutorial but more and more, I create objects without an end goal in mind and am really enjoying just making little objects and samples of techniques. Last year, I started to see patterns and connections between them and eventually started putting them in shadow boxes. You can see an example of one of my “specimen” boxes in the latest Polymer Journeys book, if you’re curious. I’m also trying to devise a class for doing it. It’s so much fun!
But when I have to create jewelry because I am vetting an article for the magazine or want to make a gift, I have lately found that I don’t look forward to the engineering of it – figuring out how it is going to hang, what stringing material will work best, what findings I need, as well as worrying about comfort and durability. I find I don’t want to think about those things when I create and it’s not out of some kind of laziness, it’s just not what I want to spend my mental and creative energy on, and I’m good with that. I just really want to follow creative paths that make me happy right now.
To that end (and because I’ve spent so much time in tile stores lately), I’ve decided I might just focus on tiles for a while. They are a very freeing form. A tile is just a canvas for 3D materials. You can do whatever you want on them. You can make them any size, any shape, and can attach whatever you want or attack it however you want. I think we really should all give ourselves the freedom to play with this form, to let ourselves be free to create from the heart with a material we love. At the end of a session of tile making, you may find you are really looking forward to creating necklaces or making beads or covering vases. But I am going to suggest you give a tile a try here and there to just let yourself create freely. Doing this can help with your designs in other forms.
To that end, of course, I’m going to share some tiles this weekend. I am going to share a lot of non-polymer ones because I think, if you’ve spent any time online, you’ve probably seen your share of polymer tiles these last few years, especially with the Fimo 50 year challenge a couple of years back and with the common inches exchanges (inches are just tiny tiles). So, I’ve got a quite a mix for you but it is all art that can translate to polymer even if it is in another material.
Laying it All Out
The opening image of this post is a photo from a class conducted by Laurie Mika. She is well-known for her colorful and intricate collage/mosaic pieces which, by the way, she teaches at various events. This collection of student work was from a polymer clay tapestry class she taught at the SAMA (Society of American Mosaic Artists) conference in Nashville just a few of weeks ago. They are all just lovely. There is no high-end technical skill needed to put these types of things together which makes them ideal for exploring color and texture and just letting yourself go. (You can check Laurie’s workshop schedule on her website.)
Jael Thorp caught my eye some years back with her “clay doodles”, including the one below. I thought they looked like zentangles for clayers. Can you imagine the flow state she must’ve been in to create this? You can just get so completely lost in this kind of work and that is a big part of why people find tiles such a wonderful creative outlet.
Check out this post with her various doodles from some years back. She went on to refine her technique, making beautiful beads and home decor with the same type of application. You can find them on her Flickr photostream.
Let’s move from polymer to ceramics now. It is a rare thing in ceramics that can’t be replicated in some fashion in polymer so I find ceramic art quite inspiring. Here is one of my favorite tile makers in ceramics, Chris Gryder, who has gone a bit more three-dimensional of late but his tile compositions are timeless.
In this composition, each tile is its own separate piece but he’s connected them all with these lines that he creates through the grid of tiles. So, really, you can make a whole bunch of tiles without worrying about what they’re going to end up as, and then, if you want to put them together as a composition because they have a similar or complementary set of color palettes, textures, or motifs, you can use lines that flow throughout to visually connect them for a larger composite composition. This approach would allow you to just make tiles as the muse directs and then you can later make them into a larger wall piece.
If you like this piece, go browse through his website or his Instagram page for more fantastic inspiring wall compositions in tile.
Keep in mind, just because tiles start out flat, they are not two-dimensional and you can create extremely three-dimensional pieces on them. Here’s one example with some very organic forms and textures created by Lauren Blakey, another ceramic artist.
And here’s another three-dimensional example in glass by Shayna Leib.
As you can see, tile work is open to all types of materials so keep that in mind as you sit down to tile. Mix in anything that your heart and muse desires. Mix and match mediums, embed oddball trinkets you’ve kept for, as yet, unknown reasons, and just keep an open mind.
After pulling these examples for you, I realized that all the examples are squares here. You don’t have to create square tiles to play with but that is the more common form. However, if you’re not feeling square, try a free form shape or an oblong one or maybe, because today is Mother’s Day, create a big heart for all the mothers out there. Happy Mother’s Day to all you amazing women!
Here’s a heart from Tina Ruppert of Wisecrackin’ Mosaics on Etsy. Pick a favorite shape and a bunch of canes or other scraps of clay and you can do something along these lines as well.
Getting Squared Away
I’m going to leave you with these thoughts and hopefully some curiosity about playing around with a tile or two, in whatever form and techniques interest you. If you need some jumpstart tutorials, here are a few places you can go:
Sara Evans has a video about her tile making process here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FAxYwgJfLo
If you want to do something tile like but still want it to be something functional when done, maybe you would like this polymer clay tile box tutorial –
https://mermaidsden.com/blog/2015/02/12/polymer-clay-tile-box
Or have fun with one of our true masters of polymer clay tiles, Chris Kapono, with her very detailed and yet tremendously fun tile project in the Polymer Arts Projects book which you can purchase and download digitally if you need it immediately or order the print edition from our website.
I opened with a discussion about doing what makes you happy and hope it gives you some food for thought. If you want to hear a couple of transformative stories in that vein, please be sure to get your copy of The Polymer Studio Issue #2, recently released, which starts and ends with stories about finding one’s happy place with one about Christine Dumont’s studio complete with a visual tour, and the other about Donna Greenberg’s focus moving from jewelry to large wall art. Check out the Issue #2 Sampler if you haven’t seen the new issues yet.
We’re daily trying to find are happy place over here as our house has continued to be demolished more and more, beyond what we (or our contractor) expected even. Old plumbing can be a tricky thing! If it would just warm up here, it wouldn’t be so bad. A cold Southern California in May is just weird.
I’d share progress shots of the house but it’s pretty much just down to studs and busted up concrete floors. Oh… And a large trench across the whole of the front yard for a new drain line. I’m thinking about making it into a moat. Like a habitrail (if you remember those hamster houses) for our pond fish. They could just swim circles around the house! Okay, probably not but gotta have fun with all this bedlam, even if it’s just dreaming up nonsense like that!
I hope you all have a wonderful Sunday and Mother’s Day! I’m off to have mimosas with the family’s fabulous females myself! Enjoy the day and your coming week!
Read MoreKathy McCurry, Bearded Sadie
Have you ever walked outside and been assaulted by a cloud of butterflies? Sounds like something that might happen in a dream, right? But it actually is happening here in Southern California. The first wave came through a month ago as Painted Lady butterflies traveled north on their annual migration only this time there were many more than usual, supported by the crazy wildflower bloom that we have going on out here. Between a very heavy rainy season and all the fires around here, the ground has been very fertile and supportive of tons and tons of mustard flowers, orange poppies, and purple lupines. So now, the next generation of butterflies, laid here by the first migratory wave, have grown, transformed, and are continuing the migration, with streams of them cavorting down the hills, rolling through backyards, and, strangely enough, traveling in clouds down the streets, following the asphalt rivers
So, of course, I had to get out in it (and out of the house) yesterday and now my head is full of flowers and butterflies. Which is weird for me. Although I love these fascinating and colorful gems of nature, they aren’t usually the thing that I turned to, especially when it comes to artwork. But, with flowers on the mind, I sat down to drum up something lovely to show you this week and came up with all kinds of polymer flowers, but not quite what you’d expect.
Let’s look at how people are switching up this most common and enduring subject for artistic inspiration.
Flower Power
first of all, if you read last week’s blog, you know I wanted to focus on mica shift techniques on my own studio table this past week and challenged you all to try a little yourselves. Well, I did get started but it was a tough week for getting things done. However, that post initiated a number of experimentations in a slew of other artist’s studios as well. It does seem that a majority of people are still in the experimentation stage so I will hold off sharing any results until we all have something more complete.
What did happen though, was a lot of online conversations as people shared their work. One such online chat was with Kathy McCurry, one of our most creative floral polymer artists. I am really excited to see what she comes up within mica shift for her flowers as they are already so intriguing. Kathy creates pieces that could be nothing else but flowers yet they are like nothing you ever have, or ever well, see on this earth. They are eye-catching, colorful, shimmery, and crazy exotic looking, as you can see in her piece opening this post and the one below. Being Cinco de Mayo today, I thought these Fiesta flowers would be an apropos example.
It is always hard to pick just one or two pictures from a talented artist like this so please to click over to her website to see more of her work if you’ve not seen it before. You can also find her featured in Polymer Journeys 2019, and she’ll be in Issue #3 of The Polymer Studio. with a bit of a personal story. You can buy the book or subscribe to the magazine (Issue #2 was released last week and is ready to ship if you need a copy!) on the website.
Other creative and beautiful, yet not-found-in-nature flowers made in polymer can be found in the studio of Ann Duncan-Hlavach. Ann has a habit of making up her own patterns for petals from just about any source of inspiration besides actual flowers, resulting in some really delightful combinations.
Here is an ode to the Monarch butterfly (since butterflies started this, it seemed like I should bring them in here somewhere on this post), but in a rose shape. Don’t you love the translucent quality of the “wings”? The translucence glows when light hits it. This makes for truly stunning and unusual bouquets as you can see in a wedding set of hers that made it into Polymer Journeys 2019.
Just how else can you mix and match inspiration for flowers? Well, the possibilities are endless, and sometimes even frightening! But in a good way. There are few people who have taken the light and delicate nature of flowers and melded them with the far end of the spectrum quite like Anastasiya Khramina. Here carnivorous flora are at once beautiful and horrifying. I do have to wonder what inspired her to add vampiric teeth and a forceful tongue lolling out of her flowers’ centers. And yes, this is not a one-off thing for her. Most of her posted creations are sharp-teethed flowers. I posted one of her pieces a year or so ago and it was one of the most viewed post of that year. I guess us humans will always be drawn by beauty, especially when it is combined with what scares us.
Now, if you really would prefer to go the more traditional way and have realistic looking flowers for adornment, you can do so while still taking it up a notch and showing up mother nature herself. Just come up with a color combination and arrangement nature hasn’t quite gotten around to creating. See how Vera of Etsy’s Handmade Blossoms does it … in pastels or a full and bright rainbow.
But, perhaps you, like me, are not so much into the flowers but you do love the shapes and forms of them with their layers or rows of petals, and the balanced swirling repetition of their arrangement. Those formations do not only come in flowers. Albina Asadullina popped an extremely realistic succulent onto the focal point of the pendant instead of a flower as one might expect. It has a bit more substance and so is not quite as delicate looking as most flowers but it visually has the same effect for the piece.
Moving on From Flowers
To quickly wrap this up, I’m going to let you do further research as you are inspired. I am utterly exhausted by a long arduous week of decision-making, further house rearranging, and trying to keep the dust at bay. Here I am in the middle of what once was my kitchen, contemplating the problem plumbing which instigated this whole thing. I now spend my entire day in my studio (and my nights this week since I have to sleep here for the time being too!) which wouldn’t be that abnormal or too bad if the family didn’t all have to retreat here too when they are home as it’s still a bit nippy outside. We are making the most of it and looking on it as a challenging adventure. Now I just need to figure out how to get work done amidst this all!
The Polymer Studio, Issue #2 … click the image to see a sampler edition
Get oodles of inspiration and have fun with the many intriguing projects, artist interviews, studio tours and other tidbits in the latest issue of The Polymer Studio. Click here to see a sampler of it.
Looking for your already purchased copy?
If you are due a digital edition, the access emails went out on Tuesday but if you didn’t see yours, check your junk mail folders or go to your account where you can access it. You can also write Sydney, my keeper of lists, from there if you have questions.
Print editions of the new issue went to the post office Wednesday directly from the printer if you were subscribed or pre-ordered before April 22nd. My shipment has been delayed but I should have them Tuesday so recent orders will go out then from here.
I hope you all have a wonderful week full of flowers, butterflies, and lots of not-so-challenging adventures!
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