Monday, September 29, 2008

Halloween Sculptures

In the mood for Halloween? I love sculpting the faces on pumpkins. They make me smile. My roots in polymer clay begin with sculpting sports and occupational Christmas ornaments in bread dough, and later switching to polymer clay. Details that can be obtained with polymer clay changed my art completely. Today I still have many of the same customers who started purchasing bread dough ornaments from me in the 1970's. Oh how I have changed. Maybe one day I'll post some of my earliest figures.


Sunday, September 28, 2008

Creative inspiration

A couple of weekends ago was the Northwest Bead Society Bead Bazaar, I renewed a friendship with another clayer, Fanita Brandeis. She has a unique style. Most of her beads are larger in size and incorporate many layers, mixing paints, foils, papers, and textures. Our polymer clay guild is lucky, Fanita will be giving a demostration at our meeting in January and I'm looking forward to her presentation.

After the bead show I came home and sitting in front of me was a veneer sheet of polymer mokume gane waiting to be used in some manner. Immediately inspired from my bead show experience and Fanita, I used that veneer to make the beads on this necklace. My beads don't have the level of depth to them that Fanita puts into her beads, but she inspired me. Thank you Fanita for the inspiration you have given me.


So the inspiration didn't stop with the previous necklace, it kept going. The smaller round word beads were also sitting on my work surface waiting their turn to be incorporated into a creation. This next necklace and bracelet set is more rustic and organic, but allowed me to use those word beads, many of which are inspirational.