Polymeri Online 23.9.11 | Millefiori sandals, Radial pendant, Polymer gaz pump and Angry bird tutorial

Maria Ivanova (vokade) has posted a cool pair of sandals with polymer clay canes decorating it. Maria was featured in PolymeriOnline several months ago with her beautiful pendants. Don't you find these sandals creative? last days of summer to try your own!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/vokade/6169460783/in/photostream

Wolfschmuch latest designs of pendants are radial and rounded, carving, mokume, layering. Her carved pendant shown in this photo, used with black acrylic (I believe so) is so unique and somewhat hypnotizing?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wolfschmuck/6119498335/

Nicolas (ANVRecife) is a designer who loves photography. This passion became more intense when he started working with design and Graphic Design many years ago. My eye caught his polymer clay gaz pump, making me take a 2nd look.

the little pump nozzle is about 2 inches long and all made of polymer clay, same for the question mark. not of the ordinary - isn't it?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/anvrecife/6068924283/

Tracy Rogers from "Cremedelagems" blog posted a super cute angry bird magnet tutorial. Tracy is a jewelry designer. Business owner & a blogger with lot's of goodies in her blog.

http://cremedelagems.blogspot.com/2011/08/angry-bird-tutorial-polymer-clay.html

check out her other polymer clay tutorials (click the tag below the post)

And also in my blog post - a FULL FREE how-to video for creating these cute creatures
http://polymerionline.blogspot.com/2013/02/polymer-clay-angry-birds-how-to-video.html

And a minute before we celebrate "Rosh Hashana" which is the jewish new year, I wish you all a sweet as honey year with nothing but good health and happy days! "Shana Tova Ve'Metuka"! :)

"Live Audience" Workshop - Brocade Collection

Not always I get the chance to take one of my online tutorials and try it live.

Most of the time, the ideas are invented in my mind, carried out on my studio and from there packed into PDF files, videos and a CD sent to you guys.

In the last couple of weeks I had the opportunity to take the theory to action in front of a "live audience" :)

20 women from the Israeli polymer clay guild gathered together to create 20 colorful pouches, good food was on the menu and cheerful mood too.

The workshops took several hours, time flew so fast that we couldn't believe it, I had no idea how long it would take, it's different when you are creating a project yourself or doing the same thing with 20 women on board.

We started the class with choosing the colors for our pouches, prepared the base hemispheres and textured the clay with the brocade design using "good old" eye shadows (Yes! don't throw them away! they are great on polymer).

After several bakings, sewing and gluing, the little round pouches turned up, looking like small colorful balls (more like a pill shape but still so cute!)

I was delighted to hear the girl's feedback, they loved the fresh innovative design, mentioned that it was different than what they have done lately - planning their next pouch as a hanger on their bag, for small change, emergency pill or band aid, keys or even candy.

If you're curious to read more about it, you can click on the link below leading to the Israeli guild webpage (this means it's in hebrew, but if you're using a browser that can

translate it, you can try read it)

http://www.tapuz.co.il/Forums2008/ViewMsg.aspx?ForumId=1484&MessageId=155773653

Right: Bags by Daniella

and the wonderful beetle bag (and others) by Liat Ripp

I had so much fun! Have to do it again :)

Looks like a new addiction! :)

Polymeri Online 16.9.11 | Sculpted heroes, Pumpkin decoration, Locket Portraits and Art dolls

Michael Leavitt hates making normal art. The Art Army Royalty, his new work, is a project in which Leavitt creates one of a kind, fully articulated sculptures by hand in an “action figure” scale, each in the likeness of a well-known artist, incorporating the style of the subject’s artwork.

Since 2002, this ongoing series of unique sculptures represent artists from every great movement of Modern and Contemporary Art, from Warhol to Banksy.

Each figure is sculpted from scratch in polymer clay, surface-finished and texturized with acrylic paint and mixed media. Leavitt engineers the miniature sculptures with articulating joints, assembling moving body parts with elastic cord so that the figures can be posed.

See Cynthia tinnaple (PCD) post and video on how Michael builds his figures.

http://intuitionkitchenproductions.com/

Spanish artist Noia Land posted a cool photo tutorial to create a cute pumpkin decoration -

http://www.flickr.com/photos/noialand/6140484251/in/contacts/

check out her blog for more cute tutorials and art -

http://noialand.blogspot.com/

Reinhard (Männeken) uses Fimo clay to create perfect portraits of people and other entities, this ability is something I admire so much as I don't have any sculpturing talent :)

Take a look at this photo of him, showing some kind of wooden clip covered with polymer clay to be used as legs.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/63875527@N07/5821331152/in/photostream

http://www.flickr.com/photos/63875527@N07/

and speaking of portraits, ClayCatShop special portrait lockets reminds me something from my childhood, their smiley faces, colors and innocence. I love it.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/claycatshop/6147936904/in/photostream

Have a great weekend!

In memory...

It was a year before 9/11 that I stood on the highest floor of the world trade center, looking at the breathtaking view of NYC. That was my first visit in the US with DH, touring the wonderful east coast for 16 days.

A year after that, while I was on a train, getting back from work, I got a call from my mother asking me if I heard. I didn't know anything since I was on the train, and she told me.

I couldn't believe it. Impossible to believe.

In our last visit, 3 years ago, we went to see the area and saw the big sphere, all squashed.

Today, my thoughts are with all of the families that lost their loved ones 10 years ago .

I wish for a better, peaceful and safer world to all of us.

Image by Brian Nieman and adopted by the Library of Congress for their 9/11/01 exhibition.

Polymeri Online 5.9.11 | Santa is near, Neon jewelry, Candy pails and Happy weddings

How do we feel that Christmas is close? Santa canes! this time it's Deb Tuchsen's cane sending some cool air to my direction :) It's still too hot in Israel!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rengalsa/6101392054/in/contacts/

Italian Ilaria Anselmi has a wonderful collection of polymer clay designs in her blog and flickr gallery (mostly delicious looking), she also works with resin and created 'neon' colored designs.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/filoecoloridiila/sets/72157605162714737/

http://filoecoloridiila.blogspot.com/

Jessica Hamilton's Halloween doll candy pails are SO cute! Made of polymer clay and 1.5" wide - perfect for small treats!

When Jessica was a girl, she wished her dolls would come to life so she could feed them tiny bread, sew them teeny socks and make their tiny beds. With the exception of the bread, she quickly realized she could do those things without the whole semi-creepy ‘coming to life’ part. Her dolls are amazing.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dollproject/6084044171/in/contacts/

http://www.etsy.com/shop/dollproject

What better way to end this post with love? These bride and groom by Dorothée Vantorre looks as if they were taken from fairy tales. Dorothée is a French polymer clay artist, a former student of art history and graduated in architecture and the creator of Mad Marquesas, creates jewelry and other designs. She is currently working on her first polymer book! I'm curious to know which tales she will tell us!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/69939106@N00/6080363372/in/photostream

http://lesfollesmarquises.blogspot.com/

Ready, Set, Fold! & Guessing game winner!

66 comments! Wow!

I just love giveaways both as a giver and as a winner ;) LOL

Congratulation Ms. Small Idea! You've won my new tutorials!

Want to know what you won?

What those mysterious tiny pictures are?

Well, the story begins 2 months ago, I was invited to my friend's daughter birthday party: "Come join us, Iris, Let's drink a cup of coffee", said the mother, "I have invited a wonderful entertainer - she makes paper folds! You'd love it!"

So I came. and... I was fascinated!

Remember when we were kids and made scoubidou strands and friendship bracelets? That was it, only with paper - the kids LOVED it!

It took me a while and I decided to take this idea, adapt it to the polymer clay world and create a more sophisticated technique using polymer.

Being a long time blogger, knowing many of the polymer clay artists around, I browsed and looked for more info about folding techniques in polymer clay and didn't find any, so I took the time to experiment and learn more about it.

When I started experimenting, I found that folding with polymer gives our designs a very special 3 dimensional effect achieved by the special characters of the material, the special colors - solid or marbled, metallic or glittery, skinner blended or extruded.

The adhesiveness of the clay makes it very easy to fold and to compress the folds - bead or jewel - these techniques are turning any piece to an intriguing, attractive, interesting and almost impossible to believe it is clay.

Although not as stretching as ribbon or flexible as paper - polymer clay with it's wonderful color palette, patterns and textures take these techniques into a whole different level.

Looking back at the history of weaving and folding, weaving was used by our prehistoric ancestors as an aid in their quest for basic needs of food, shelter & clothing, and folding, especially paper folding (japanese Origami), is an art of folding objects out of paper without cutting/pasting - that's perfect for clay! the clay will stick to itself!

These ancient techniques soon became very popular and moved to the modern era in the shape of recycled and found materials.

So, why not use use traditional folds to create entirely new and exciting designs?

After 1.5 months of work, trials and error, investigating these techniques from every possible angle - It's finally ready.

In this new set of PolyPediaOnline tutorials I chose to use our medium - polymer clay - to create folded, weaved and rolled fine jewelry and accessories.

Polymer clay folding, weaving and rolling are new techniques you'll want to add to your skills repertoire!

Want to read more about it?

Click here for more details!