All articles filed in December 2009
Christmas in Philadelphia
My artistic collaborator and Feline companion Plumpton extends Season’s Greetings to everyone and hopes that you all find a dead mouse in your stocking on Christmas morning. I think I’ll pass on that one, Plumpton. So, while I’m checking my shoes and checking them twice, have fun watching the movie I took of the Holiday Show playing in the lobby of the Comcast Center in Philadelphia.
New Ideas for Christmas Ornaments
Santa’s Workshop is in full swing again this year, but I’m falling behind. I hoped to have all the new ornaments done by tonight, but as you can see, some are still baking.
The glass ornament with the tassel is a recycle. I found it in the trash, but the bottom part was broken. I cut it off and replaced it with a beaded tassel (I bought a box of them years ago at an “After Christmas” sale) and tied some fancy ribbon to the top.
The rest are glass balls covered with polymer clay. I like to collect interesting yarns, fibers and ribbons and I think they make nice tassels for the ornaments. One of the tassels has big metal and ceramic beads tied into the yarn.
Centsationalgirl.com has a post with great ideas for making ornaments, and links to more than one hundred other pages with ornament ideas and tutorials. Now you have no excuse not to deck the halls. Get down with your bad elf!
Some pictures of more finished ornaments
Philadelphia From Up High
Here’s another way to look at things: From the 50th floor of a tall building on a clear day with a zoom lens. You can look down into Easten State Penitentiary, get a bird’s eye view of Swann Fountain, see ships on the Delaware, the Ben Franklin Bridge, and see the Schuylkill River meandering behind the Art Museum.
My Pivot Beads
Here are my pivot beads from the exercise in Polymer Clay Color Inspirations. The top pictures show the pivot color variations mixed according to the directions in the book. You apply thin sheets of the colors over thin sheets of the stripes. One of the purposes of the exercise is to show what effect stripes of black, white and gray have on the layers of color applied over them. Even though I took a Watercolor Technique class with Maggie Maggio some time ago, what I learned there is starting to make more sense. On to color collages!
To see some of my interpretations of the Watercolor Technique, press here, here, or here.
This just in! I was thrilled to see that Seth Savarick has an article in the latest issue of Art Jewelry Magazine on how to make his distinctive, lightweight bangle. I have taken two classes with Seth and he has taught me so much about craftsmanship-an area where I can aways improve. He also inspired me to learn how to burn my own screens for printing on polymer clay. I wrote two articles explaining the process that appear in the Fall 2007 and Winter 2007-2008 issues of Polymer Cafe. You can order the back issues to find out how to do it with a Speedball kit and some inexpensive equipment. And if you have the chance to take a class with Seth, don’t pass it up!
Ornamento 