Chaos: things don't always go as planned

Sometimes things just don't go as planned. I'm actually not surprised that my latest project didn't work out as intended. This is the busiest month of the year for me, as I'm knee-deep in lots of house-hold seasonal events: preparing and planting the garden (we have 2 large vegetable gardens); protecting, picking, cleaning, preparing and enjoying my strawberry harvest bounty; protecting the various fruit trees that are pinking or in immature fruit stage; and spring cleaning my house... all this piled on top of other "normal" life activities, obligations and chores. So my life is always a bit chaotic in the month of May, and this polymer project, though not intended to be, is a great reflection of that chaos.

Problem is, I had too many ideas for this project, and I tried to incorporate too many of them into this one piece. **sigh** I had feared that trying to cram too many ideas into one piece might indeed become disastrous, but I just had to try, didn't I? Why? Well, because I was dying to get all the ideas out there and just didn't want to wait. Lessons learned, often the hard way.

So my first idea was to create a portion of a sun image, with lots of flowing lines, but not the entire sun... here's a rough sketch of my first idea (the one I should have probably stuck with):

The PCAGOE theme for this month is "quilled" polymer, and this image would have worked well. Since I've done a couple other quilled pieces in the past, and wrote the tutorial article for The Polymer Arts magazine, I really wanted this to be something special. So I keep thinking about it and over thinking it. And then, I got the idea to upcycle some cds and to incorporate layers of quilling. Here's where I went terribly wrong. You see, this secondary idea did not follow the sketched image at all, it was something entirely different, and probably would have worked well had I stuck to that idea and the image I saw with it. But I didn't want to abandon that flowing sun image (chalk that up to having tons of rain in the past couple weeks), so I made the decision to combine the two (well, basically three) ideas into creating a layered and now full sun image (in order to incorporate the upcycled cd idea).  Oh, and then I had a fourth idea of using curled strips, as I've seen these used in quilled paper art lately.  (imagine a rolled eye animated emoticon here)

So, beyond being a bear to create this piece, with all the layers and trying to keep everything in place when cured (thanks to heat + gravity concerns that polymer artists know so well), the design just doesn't really work for me in the finished format. Well, I'm not sure it's finished either, I just basically ran out of time since I needed to photograph this with whatever remaining daylight I had at 8PM...  I may keep adding to it and trying to salvage something that I like from it.

Or, I might just cut it in half. When I cut the photos in half, I kind of like what happens... 

And... when I photoshop those halves into how I would hang them on the wall, I'm liking this effect even more.

...or...

So, I might be able to redeem the chaos after all... If I do, I'll be sure to post an update about it here on the blog.  What about you? Have you had life's chaos, calm or emotions subconsciously effect a project? What do you think of my chaotic work of art? What changes, do you think, would make this piece work better? I'd love to hear your thoughts, so leave me a comment below!

I'll post a reminder here on the blog for the challenge vote... as always, voting will open on the first of the month, and will be open from June 1st through June 7th. 

A Play Break to Repurpose

I've been busily reorganizing my studio spaces over the past week.  I'm not yet finished, but the end is in sight, only a day or two more....  I took a break from my organization project to create a piece for my guild challenge.  The PCAGOE (Polymer Clay Guild of Etsy) challenge theme for the month of February 2014 is wall hangings.  I had a completely different idea in mind for this challenge, but the presence of something that needed to be used sparked this project.

I had been asked by a friend to make another one of my turtle island pieces, which I began a few months ago.  I had stretched the canvas on my frame and coated it with liquid polymer, but when I cured that layer the center caved in and there was a lot of slack in the canvas, which for a "quilled" polymer look would not work.  The quilled project really needs to start with a taut canvas surface, because of how many layers of clay are concentrated in one layer creating a lot of weight.  Here's a photo of what went wrong with the canvas:

I've been so busy with my studio reorganize that I had pushed myself to the last day before the challenge deadline and realized that my original plan for this challenge would not have enough time to come together (I'll have to revisit that particular idea another time).  About a year or more ago, I had an idea to try a two layer sandwich of polymer then make certain shape partial cuts to fold back and allow the folds and the color contrast to create the design, so I decided to try this on my saggy  canvas.  At first I was going to cut away the canvas, but quickly realized that I could incorporate it into the design, thus giving more stability to my project.  So I covered the canvas again with liquid polymer, but this time I mixed it with some gold mica.  I made a swirl pattern radiating out from the center.  Some gold glitter scattered on top of the lpc layer added just a bit of shimmer.  I then made two large sheets of polymer (the circle is about 12" to 14" in diameter); one was a skinner blend that radiated from gold in the center to bronze on the outer areas and the top sheet was a blend of blue granite (has silver glitter flecks) mixed with blue pearl, cobalt blue and translucent.

After cutting the shapes and mounting the large polymer sheets to the canvas, I was ready to make the folds to reveal the design.  Some bonding agent, with the help of a few embossed dots as design elements, helped to secure the sheets to the canvas.  Here are some side view shots of the piece, so you can see the folded over elements:

And here are some close up shots:

While I'm fairly happy with my idea becoming a reality in this piece, this project was simply too rushed for me.  I think this design idea has some great potential and I do plan to revisit this idea another day when I can devote more time and effort to the construction.  Plus, (as always seems to happen) I have a whole other tangent of new ideas to implement in the next, or perhaps the 3rd iteration! ;) Please take a moment and let me know what you think about this piece in the comments!

Voting for this challenge will begin on February 1st and will run through February 7th (midnight EST).  I'll try to remember to repost a voting reminder at that time.  A post with my new studio changes is coming soon! 

Star Light Star Bright

It's time again for voting.  The March PCAGOE challenge theme was Celestial (Sun, Moon, Stars, etc.).  My idea was a multi-layered, dimensional, star shaped night light. Constructed of 3 layers and various cuts to reveal the different layers and allow the light to shine through.  The base layer is made of translucent clay with gold mica. The second layer is a mixture of red and translucent with the star arms of this layer cut into shapes that would leave an open star shape in the center, revealing first layer. The third layer is a mix of purple and translucent, the star arms again were cut into shapes that would leave another center open star shape, revealing the red layer outlining the original center cut out star. Some circle cut-out shapes were included in the layers on each of the star arms; one to reveal the red layer, one to reveal the first translucent gold layer and 2 smaller holes that were cut through all 3 layers to reveal complete negative space. After curing, sanding and buffing, as a final element, spirals were drawn onto the purple layer using an embossing pen and gold embossing powder which was heat set. I fabricated a clay piece for the light fixture attachment and the final step was to glue that in place. Below are 2 photos of the piece, unlit and lit...  For more views of this piece please visit my flickr photo stream.

 

 And here are the other entries, all stellar examples of how versatile the polymer medium truly is!

Please remember to go vote at the PCAGOE blog before midnight 3/7/13 EST!