Colorful Inspirations…

Martha Aleo- Ornamento–  from Philadelphia has been blogging about her results of following along with the exercises in our book, Polymer Clay Color Inspirations… it is thrilling to see her becoming more confident about making color choices in her work.

Confident Color DVD…

Confident Color -Exploring Textile Patterns
Now Shipping! A 2 DVD set, nearly 4 hours of great, innovative ideas from Lindly!

Learn how to add harmony to your work with increased color confidence while learning valuable bench tricks and techniques for working with polymer clay. Lindly will walk you through making a series of color coordinated stripe blends that will be used to make eleven different laminated textile inspired patterns including: Ikat, Seminole Stripes and Flame stitch.

Runtime: Disc 1: 120 mins Disc 2: 97 mins Total length 3Hrs 37 mins on 2 DVD’s

Upcoming Workshop in New York City…

 Confident Color/ Tropical Flower Inspirations
Two day workshop with Lindly Haunani
Saturday June 5th and Sunday June 6th, 2010

For registration details please visit the New York City Polymer Clay Guild’s web site here

 Make a sumptuous tropical floral arrangement using simple polymer clay canes that can be used as a focal point for a necklace or be worn as a brooch. Several of the most amazing, inspiring joys of nature including torch ginger, birds of paradise, orchids, ferns and palm fronds will provide inspiration.

Lindly will walk you through designing and mixing a cohesive color scheme that includes lights, darks, petals, leaves and appropriate background colors for your cane collages.

Then learn how to construct the blended canes and practice some useful sculpting strategies. Pulling the assemblage together, as a series of wearable color sample brooches will be part of the fun learning experience

Join Lindly Haunani, a nationally recognized colorist for a fun and illuminating weekend workshop. While you may know just what colors you like, exactly how to mix them, using them in harmonious combinations can be challenging. Learn how to add impact to your polymer clay work with increased color confidence. Ask questions, be ready to laugh and increase your color confidence.

This workshop is appropriate for a beginner or as a refresher/expansion course for the more experienced polymer clay artist. 

Upcoming Workshop In Atlanta

I will be teaching my Mokume Gane Survey Workshop= Mokume X Five on May 1st and 2nd, 2010 – more information and registration details may be found here.

Colour Lovers…

I am delighted to see our new book- Polymer Clay Color Inspirations– included in today’s “Eclectic Color Roundup”   – on the Colour Lovers blog.

Colour Lovers is a very interesting and dynamic site = Color + Design Community for Creative Inspiration (last count 259,353 members) and includes forums, patterns,palettes, trends, a blog and a store.

One of the recent posts that I particularily enjoyed was on the Colors of Frida Kahlo.

Colorful “Super-Sized”…

At the First Synergy conference in Baltimore I attended a presentation by Robert Dancik on Cold Connections– and as the room filled up to standing room only, I began to wonder just how he was going to demonstrate riveting to a crowd of that size…. and he did it be super sizing his demo materials! Even the people on the back could see an eight inch by two foot rivet tube.

 

A couple of weeks ago as I was preparing color samples for a workshop- I decided to take Roberts lead and “super sized” my samples so they would be easier for a large group to see. Instead of using a 3/4″ Kemper cutter to make some tasting tiles- I used a 2″ Ateco square cutter. These cutters are available as a set of six (1 3/8′ – 2 5/8″) and may be ordered from Polymer Clay Express.

Next time you make color samples you may want to try super sizing them- it doesn’t take that much more clay if you roll your sheets thin on a pasta machine and they are much easier to see- either in your studio or part of a class presentation.  If you are working along with the exercises in our (Maggie Maggio and myself) book- Polymer Clay Color Inspirations- having the tasting tiles in chapter Four/ Choosing Your Colors for a Project Palette   “super sized” would make them easier to see and use.

Carnival Asparagus…

If you have ever watched me work, either at a polymer clay retreat or in my studio- you would know that I am not shy about making more than one… and recently I was challenged to expand my series of Asparagus Crown bracelets to include five more pieces. (One can only wonder at over 500 individually  placed cane slices- 15 x 2 x 22 spears?)

 

The color of the base clay used to make the spears varies slightly- from a yellower green designed to match a set of double-hole  resin beads that I had purchased at a bead show several years ago and wanted to experiment with, to a slightly bluer green that was mixed to co-ordinate with the turquoise tip cane I had on hand.

 

The first bracelet I made included in the tip segue way a purple cane. A color combination that I have used before- not as an exact copy from nature, but rather to capture the notion of the beautiful slates in actual asparagus tips.

The second bracelet was made using a warmer green for the spears  and a red-orange mix of fuchsia for the extreme tips, overlapped with  high contrast yellow green cane slices.

The third bracelet was designed for “air” in that there are half as many spears, separated with the half round resin beads.

And the fourth bracelet? …currently my favorite. Most certainly I am viewing this particular color combination in the context of the series, but most importantly- what I would like to relay to you is…neon pink, turquoise green and yellow green, while not being the natural colors of asparagus, are NOT supposed to work together. The entire time I was adding the cane slices to  the spears to make this piece, I felt “uncomfortable” about the color choice. And at the same time propelled to finish making it, beyond looking at the individual pieces, instead string the bracelet up and then putting it aside to look at another day.

“If you always do what you always did…you would always get what you always got!”

Artful Afternoons in Annandale, Virginia

If you live in the Washington DC area- or plan to be visiting- I have posted the Fall 2009- Spring 2010 schedule here. Or you can continue reading here 

Colorful Workshops…

Great news.. (at least for me) my upcoming workshop next weekend in Atlanta is totally “‘sold out” and wait list only.

Great news… for YOU if you would like to take a color workshop with me on October 2nd- and/or the  3rd & 4th in Jordan, Minnesota (at Maureen Carlson’s Center for the Arts– there are still spaces left.

Note: If you have never been to Maureen’s – it is a truly magically creative place to take part in a workshop – this will be my seventh year of teaching there …

Color Inspirations…

After much anticipation…our book Polymer Clay Color Inspirations is finally “here” = available at your local bookstore or at Amazon. It  has been delightful to read all of the positive comments on Polymer Clay Daily . You can read more about the book on the Polymerartarchive site here.

…more great news – Maggie Maggio will be blogging about the exercises featured in our book as a regular feature to her blog = Weekend Extras. I look forward to seeing everyone’s color inspirations.