An Interesting Experiment

This past Spring when I was in Loveland doing the shoot for my book, I heard the book Ancient Modern by Ronna Sarvas Weltman mentioned several times. It was mostly things like "what color background did we use on Ancient Modern?" or "it is the same size spread as Ancient Modern." When I was in Barnes & Noble the other day, I picked up a copy and had to take a look.

I love Ronna's use of color, I love her chunky style of jewelry, and I love the textures that everything has. I let things stew for a bit and started to wonder how glass and polymer might look together. I stewed on the thoughts so long that I couldn't get it out of my head. It started keeping me awake at night, lol. SO, with my first full day of freedom, I set out to the local craft store and bought me some supplies. I already had most of the suggested tools on hand from working with PMC. I just needed the pasta machine for working the clay, the clay itself, and I picked up a bead roller too.

The photo above is my first ever piece using polymer clay! I literally spent HOURS playing with the stuff. It really is interesting. I can't decided yet if I like it or if I wasted a lot of money, lol. The glass beads I used were just some beads I had laying around. So, the plan for today is to make glass beads this morning and experiment with polymer more this afternoon. I had another sleepless night of imagining the kind of glass beads I would rather see in this design, I am working on those first so maybe tomorrow I will be able to string some up a little sumptin sumptin. That is the trouble with being a glass artist and not necessarily a beader... I don't have a huge stash from which to work, I have to have the idea for the bead I want, make the bead, wait for it to anneal, clean it and then make the piece of jewelry. *sigh* sometimes I wish I had a stash of beads.

One thing I will say, for those that are thinking about trying to play with polymer. For me, I don't work well when learning with a blank slate, I need to have a project to try. And I think that is why I was working for HOURS on things. I was too scattered and didn't know what to do. So, this is the kind of situation where I say, copy a tutorial to the letter. Learn the technique. Keep that project for yourself. And then take off with your own ideas from there. That's what I am going to do.