The Klimt Look

One of my favorite painters is Gustav Klimt.  Gold, bronzes, jewel tones all over and suggestive looks on the subjects.  I had the opportunity to see several of his paintings and especially The Kiss live and direct at the Velvedere Museum.  Man, oh man, I do not think I moved, blinked or was able to talk for half an hour.  Once my brain started to work again, I began to think of a way to recreate the look and effect on jewelry, decadent golds and richly saturated colors, a convoluted design, patterns underneath, geometric shapes as an element... I came up with this piece. 

30 plus years later

When I got laid off, my two best friends took me out to lunch.  We went to the Cheesecake Factory up top Macy's overlooking Union Square in San Francisco.  We asked a friendly tourist to take a picture of us.  And because my friends have been my friends since we met in 7th grade, I had to make something special with this picture.  To make this frame I used the mica shifting technique on polymer clay.  Impressing a deep grooved stamp on the raw metallic clay, then shaving the top layer and finally leveling the clay.  The chatoyant effect (cat's eye) gives the impression that there is something going on in there that tricks the eye, because the surface is perfectly smooth and flat.  Pretty neat, huh?

I liked the technique and had extra clay leftover, so I created a bracelet, a pendant and a pair of earrings; rubber cord holds the medallions together.  Because polymer clay is so light, the earrings do not pull my ears down.  Here is a picture of the set and a closeup of one of the medallions to show the chatoyancy detail. 

Inlaid, framed, inked and happy!

How happy the brothers and sisters are in this picture!  Very seldom we get all the siblings in one State, let alone in one house.  So I shot this picture and knew I had to do something special with it.  They all like to garden, so I decided to punch flowers and a bug out of heavy card stock.  Using a technique I had seen Tim Holtz use, I was able to cover a 1$ frame with metal air duct tape and applied alcohol inks.  Using metal pieces to add some flare (corners, key, pin, etc) just fell into place smoothly.  I backed the picture with a splatered looking mat and it suits the frame perfectly.  My two days of work were rewarded with the best smile from my husband when he unwrapped this present on Christmas morning.  How cool is that!

Polymer Clay Quilt

What a forgiving medium!  It can be very intense to work with and there is always 'just a little more' that can be added/removed/polished/tweaked with... but the results... oh my.  For a person with no limitations, using our hands to shape, roll, attach and manupulate the clay is not difficult.  For those of us who have a hard time using our hands... wellllll that is why I started by saying it is a forgiving medium.  I have created pieces usable in different applications, such as home decor such as picture frames or custom jewelry, and beyond those, cork coverings, imitation rocks... it just works out well.

Polymer clay quilt

This a a fun one! the simple and traditional Tumbling Blocks quilting pattern offers an excellent reward when polymer clay is used.  Each color was cut out from a sheet; a little perfect pearls on the white clay gives the shimmer of silk, an embedded pattern on the black one makes it stand out and glitter on the red one, was the perfect combination.  After baking the individually cut segments, I buffed each and then assembled the quilt on an 8x8 piece of glass.  I ran a bead of liquid polymer clay and created a seamless block. 

Explosion book (ok, it looks like a purse)

This was a wonderful project!  My friend and her boyfriend had gotten engaged and came to visit for the weekend in the summer.  The kids are fantastic, the couple a fun pair.  The dinner turned out awesome (and I did not cut myself or burned my hands, how good is that?!).  We took lots of pictures and then I created this explosion book.  Closes up to only 2" wide and is only 5.5" tall.  I built a 'purse' with artist canvas, added feet (painted with crackle paint), beaded wire handles, three dimensional effects, etc.  Some picture editing, special paper, the right embelishments and a couple of weeks to finish it yielded a very good record of the visit.  I mailed it to her for her XX (we shall not disclose the year of the happy event) b-day in October and I was proud of the results.  Here are other pictures of the completed piece. 

The seams are re-inforced in the back to prevent wear and tear as the pages are opened and closed.  There is only a half a quadrant with narrative journaling (seen on the first page) and the rest of the journaling was bulleted in tags.