MOKUME GANE comes to VANCOUVER! September 2015

September 12+13, 2015
Crafts Council of British Columbia, Granville Island, Vancouver, BC
See the CBCCC webpage here
Sign up here with EventBrite
Questions? For more images of the joys of Mokume Gane, go here.
Contact Raine McKay, 604-687-6511 or email raine.mckay [ at ] craftcouncilbc.ca  Or email me.
For all artists: No experience needed with polymer, but comfort with art materials and an ease in working with your hands will be great. The images below will give you a sense of the kind of patterning you can create in polymer clays. Each set of patterns is different: this technique is especially for you who love serendipity!

Carol Simmons Workshop

For some of you following this Blog I would like to let you know that Carol Simmons will be teaching on Vancouver Island back to back weekends in August. 

I will be attending the Hidden Jewels Mokume workshop in Nanaimo and am really looking forward to it.

Contact information is in the photo below.

Guild News

I would like to keep you informed of what is happening with our Guild. It has been decided to shut the Guild down in its present form. We will no longer be having monthly meetings. For many reasons there has been a lack of interest by  members to attend these monthly meetings.

Yahoo online site will remain https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Vancouverpolyclayers/info  and members will be kept informed of any upcoming events.  I am not sure what will be happening with the Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/VancouverPolymerClayGuild  as Nancy is also in charge of that.

Our Guild Blog will be kept up to date by myself and/or Joan Tayler, 

I was at Joan’s studio yesterday and it was such a delight to see and touch her beautiful series of new bowls which have been featured on her Blog and her Facebook page.

 

Tumble Update

I am getting back to normal after my scooter tumble and a dislocated left shoulder. I picked up my wheels last week and said final goodbyes to nurse Ratchett’s bi-weekly visits. I think she was doing the happy dance down my driveway while muttering some obscenities. I still have a couple more weeks of physio but have finally been given the all clear to get back to the studio and play with clay.

Picking Up My repaired scooter

What is on my Worktable

A week has passed since my last post and since my New Year’s resolution is to try to post at least once a week, here I am.

This batch of Faux Jade is fresh from curing in my oven and came out a bit darker than when it went in but that seems to be the nature of the beast in using translucent clay (Premo at 275 for an hour). However; all is not lost as after polishing and buffing instead of being Burmese Jade/Jadeite it will be our more common Canadian Nephrite Jade.

I really like my new Sculpey cabochon mold and am looking forward to getting great use out of it.

The Inukshuk is still translucent enough to show the wooden toothpicks I used for stability whilst building but I can fix that and still have a pendant. Now the fun begins with the sanding , polishing and finishing. Hopefully I will have a couple of finished products to show in my next post.

Hi Ho Hi Ho Its off to work I go

I have been posting over the past couple of weeks my contributions to #polymerartchallenge . It is great to be back to bloging for myself after doing so for the past couple of years for our Vancouver Polymer Clay Guild which is on a short holiday from regular meetings.
However the past couple of days have seemed stressful and I just can't seem to get my mojo working.
It has been so bad that it seems I even cleaned up my work table.

Day Three of #PolymerArtChallenge

‪#‎PolymerArtChallenge of Donna Greenberg's FB challenge. Thanks to Andrea Victoria Paradiso for her nomination as well as Carolyn Joy Good of Two Good Claymates.  Rules: For 5 days the nominated artist will show one of their pieces & nominate 1 other artist to do the same.

Today I would like to nominate Nick Spirov of Sophia, Bulgaria. Nick’s polymer clay work can be found at https://www.flickr.com/photos/nspirov/ or on facebook at https://bg-bg.facebook.com/nspirov

Day 3: Another more recent bowl in my Space series. ( I notice this space and cosmos in polymer clay seems to be quite popular these days)

This bowl I call Solar Flare. Sorry for the photo quality but it was a rainy day yesterday and the light was bad ;-(

The stand it is resting on is one of those wooden collapsing ones in many different sizes that you find in all the Polynesian shops in Hawaii. It would be a great project to make them in clay ;-)

Day Two of #Polymerartchallenge

 ‪#‎PolymerArtChallenge of Donna Greenberg's FB challenge. Thanks to Andrea Victoria Paradiso for her nomination as well as Carolyn Joy Good of Two Good Claymates.  Rules: For 5 days the nominated artist will show one of their pieces & nominate 1 other artist to do the same.
Today I would like to nominate a friend, fellow guild member and very talented artist, Ellen Kocher . Sorry Andrea but I have a guy in mind for my next post ;-)
Day 2: A faux jade bowl and a Space Flower Bowl unite. I combined Lynda C. Moseley and Tory Hughes faux jade techniques for the jade bowl but was never too happy with the amount of plaque, although others seem to like it. The Space Flower Bowl was done with a technique I am still working on and fit so nicely in the larger bowl I decided to keep them that way.

Day One of Donna Greenberg Challenge

Day one of ‪#‎PolymerArtChallenge of Donna Greenberg's FB challenge. Thanks to Andrea Victoria Paradiso for her nomination as well as Carolyn Joy Good of Two Good Claymates. 

Andrea is “on a mission to get a little more Male Energy in the mix amongst us Clayers” but there is such a small percentage of male clayers and most of the ones I am familiar with have already been tagged. I would like to nominate Jon Burgess , a fairly new face to polymer clay. I have been following his work on facebook , pinterest , flickr and check in on his blog from time to time.

I had to find some earlier work in my vault. This is a necklace I made during a Helen Breil and Eugenia Chan workshop a few years ago.