June Vote!!

Goodness, I nearly missed out on posting a voting reminder here! I'm up to my eyeballs in strawberries and busy getting my house and gardens ready for summer, so I've been quite distracted from the computer these days. There are only 2 days left for the June PCAGOE challenge vote! The theme this month was "Quilled" Polymer, and we had a great variety of pieces among our participating members, see for yourself:

Voting is only open until the 7th of June, midnight EST... So head over to the PCAGOE blog and cast your vote for your 3 favorite pieces! Remember, one lucky voter is chosen every month, to win a prize... it could be YOU this month, but you have to vote for the chance! Thanks to everyone who takes a moment to vote!

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. 

February Vote - Four Seasons

Wow, time has gotten away from me again! There's only 1 and a half days left to vote for this month's challenge! Here's a peek at the fun pieces my guild members and I have created for the four seasons theme:

Please head over the the PCAGOE blog and vote for your 3 favorite entries! One randomly selected voter will be chosen to win a free prize... it could be you this month! Voting will close for this challenge at midnight EST on February 7th, so hurry over to the PCAGOE page now!

Sun Dog - an exercise in polymer painting

My husband and I are owned by a canine sun worshiper. I love to take photos of my fur-faced baby, and one of the photos I took just this week spawned part of my inspiration for the challenge piece of the month. I have been wanting to do a portrait of this guy (and one of my dear departed cats), and this challenge gave me great opportunity to tackle the idea, at least of my pup... kitties to be done at another time!

This month, our theme is "Interpretation". Our guild's challenge coordinator (Arlene Harrison) chose the artist, from whom we would all chose a painting and then create our own homage. Arlene chose one of her favorite artists, Wyatt Waters, a watercolorist. Waters' style is that of realistically rendered images, most of his subjects are everyday life or small town America, and his color style I would describe as a vibrant primary-based mixed hues. You can find Waters' Facebook page here to check out more of his lovely paintings. 

Waters' painting of my choosing, was one which he did of his dog, and it is entitled "James". I've taken the liberty of posting a copy of his image of this sweet painting, which you can also find in his gallery of paintings on his Facebook page.

James Watercolor painting by Wyatt Waters

This challenge piece was a bit rushed, it all came together, from inspiration to final product, in 2 days.  I'm in the midst of another studio reorganize, and busy with the garden, among other things... so, I almost wasn't going to make a piece. But, I really hated to break the now (I think) 2 year running streak of creating a challenge piece every month. I had decided that if I was going to tackle this challenge, I wanted to do a polymer painting. I wanted to take my inspiration from the subject and style of Waters' painting, but I wanted to use my own image. I had just taken some great photos of my fur-baby, while he was sitting in the sun on our lounge chair, and thus the idea for this month's project was in place. 

I used a piece of glass, covered with LPC to block out the colors of my puppy, and his chair, in alcohol inks. After baking the first layer of this, I peeled it off the glass and realized that I liked the clarity of the side that was against the glass, so I placed it back on the glass and built up more layers on the side that was originally supposed to be the viewing side. The only problem with this is that my painting is now a reversed image of the original. I used artistic license to omit certain things from the original photo, to simplify the image (also because of my time constraint).

Because it was rushed, I'm not as happy with it as I had thought I would be, especially the fact that it is the reversed image of the original. But all-in-all I am pleased with the lessons learned in this project. And as always, I hope to do more with this technique in the future. Here's a close-up of my sundog:

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this project, leave me a comment below! Voting for this challenge opens on October 1st and will run through to the 7th at midnight EST. I'll post a reminder here on the blog... Here's one more shot, from an angle, of my sundog:

A Polymer Cover-up

I'm posting about a project that was completely independent, i.e. not driven by a guild challenge! ;) Don't get me wrong, I love my guild challenges, but I never seem to post about other projects here. This one happened because I have this coral/salmon colored t-shirt that acquired some bleach spots at the bottom. I love the cut and fit of this t-shirt and really didn't want to retire it to the household chore wardrobe. So, I decided to cover up the spots, with polymer!

I sketched out a basic radial design in washable fabric pen, then I set to work attaching small circle and oval cut outs of polymer in shades of blue and white (yep, still in that orange/blue phase that I've been in for the last 2 months...) ;) The blue and white clays were rolled out to a thin gauge (#4 on my Imperia pasta machine, which has a range of 6 different thicknesses, #1 being thickest and #6 being thinnest). I used a tiny round kemper cutter to cut the round circles, and I used the empty ferrule of an old paintbrush that lost it's bristles to make the tiny oval slivers. I kept the cut pieces small to eliminate cumbersome feeling within the shirt and keep the fabric movable. I attached each cut shape by applying bake n bond to the backside of the polymer pieces. I worked in segments of about 6" by 8", curing in between segments to keep the areas for curing totally flat in the oven. 

Here's a shot of the shirt before the applied polymer, you can see the bleach spots (lower center and right) that I was trying to mask:

So, next time (and I do plan to do more of these), I will use a thinner setting on the pasta machine for my polymer sheeting, probably #5. While the #4 guage worked okay here, it did add a bit of weight to the shirt. I also think that a thinner setting will make for a sturdier design. You might ask, is it machine washable? I tested that, this shirt has gone through the wash on a normal cycle and survived, only one of the polymer pieces came off (as you can see in the front view below). This I consider a success, and I will be replacing the piece that came off. If you decide to try this for yourself, please consider washing your finished garment (in cold water only) with small loads of laundry or, choose delicate cycle or hand wash to avoid causing any missing pieces... and always air dry (heat from the dryer could effect the polymer).

The design wraps around the side and also spreads across the back. Here's the flat back view:

And the flattened side view:

I had so much fun making this, I love that I saved a favorite shirt, and I love how it turned out! I can hardly wait to jazz up another piece of clothing! I can also see this idea put into use to cover up unwanted holes in clothing.... lots of ideas running around in my head! So, until my next project posting, leave me a comment and tell me what you think about my polymer bedecked T-shirt... Thanks!

UPDATE 7/19/15: I just reattached the one piece that went missing after machine washing, and I removed and replaced the one circle that (for whatever reason) got a little darker than the rest.  It must have been touching the side of the oven at one point and got a bit scorched. Let me tell you, removing that little circle was tough! I couldn't believe how fast it was attached... and it ended up tearing into the blue clay and leaving a bit of the blue behind... I was thinking it would just pop off with a little pressure, but it did not! So, now I'm even more certain about the strength of these little pieces attached to the shirt. 

I'm so happy to report that this project was shared on Polymer Clay Daily!! Here's the link:

http://polymerclaydaily.com/2015/07/20/polymer-cover-up/comment-page-1/#comment-341701

Better Late Than Never! ~ Paleo Necklace Challenge Entry

Today is the last day to vote for the August 2013 PCAGOE challenge.  I'm only posting this now because I was tied up at the beginning of the month with a polymer clay retreat; a weekend away to play with clay and meet (for the first time in person) some internet friends from my guild. I'll post more about that experience soon!  So about the August challenge... this month's theme was Tribal-Goddess and the interpretations were varied and wonderful!  It's always so great to see so much diversity among all of the entries.  My interpretation came about almost accidentally.  The piece emerged as a polymer clay necklace of faux stone and faux rock beads, etched with caveman type drawings.  When I set to work on this challenge, I had in mind an all together different concept; I was planning to create a mother earth figurine. While mixing the clay for the figurine, I saw a beautiful crackled blend of colors appear which begged to be turned into something. Instead of setting that aside to move onto the "planned idea", I let the clay guide me to create this piece.

Those are my favorite types of creative sessions when the clay almost has a mind of its own... so rewarding! For more views of this piece, please visit my flickr photostream

Here's a glimpse at the other wonderful entries created by my guild mates:

Voting closes tonight (8/7/2013) at midnight EST, so head over to the PCAGOE blog and cast your vote for your 3 favorite entries.  Each month 3 lucky voters are randomly chosen to win a prize... one of the winners could be you! So please do go to the guild blog and vote!

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!