Studio Time: More Polymer Progress

Starting over in polymer clay has slowed me down quite a bit! I have the unrealistically high expectations of wanting my work to be as good as the lampwork I just left off. Um. No. It's going to take...time. And practice. Lots of it. But every time I practice, I see progress.

Here are the pieces from last week. I'm pleased with the color maturity, thanks to the lessons from Maggie Maggio and Lindley Huanani on color mixing. I would have been struggling so much longer without that vital resource. I'm hoping to bring these color studies back to glass (whenever I get to go back to it). The shaping is still a bit of a struggle. I sanded this piece down, but it didn't improve the shaping much. Although organic, it mixed beautifully with a Beverly Ash Gilbert seed bead medley called Golden Raspberry.






Now this one, on the other hand, although it's still a little organic, I did manage to sand down the barrel halves into decent beads. I varnished the Ragged Heart, half barrels and the little headpins with black disks (gotta think of a name for these as I quite like them). This was mixed with a Beverly bead soup called Emily's mix. While there was no turquoise in the clay, the bead mix made the necklace much richer with this extra color.







This set I'm really, really close to being happy with. I might even decide to be happy with it. I still see things I want to fix, but don't all artists? I'm trying to figure out when it's "good enough." Heh. I'm sure we always want to figure that out. Anyway, this is similar to the Rainbow Quilted Heart only in lighter and lighter shades of Fimo Turquoise. I used a Sarah Hornik stringer technique called Wigwag cane. The Wigwag is the outline on the heart and two of the disk pendants. I also mimicked an extruded ball, but just rolled out the cane and twisted it into the coiled ball.



I'm finding it interesting how radically different my polymer clay is from my lampwork. I'm not settled with this yet. I think it's because I'm still exploring techniques. It's to early to be discovering a personal style while I'm learning the technical ins and outs. I'd like to reclaim some of the style I had been exploring in glass. However, methinks me not ready yet. Patience. Practice.