Tag Archives: art

monthly muse – floral

  By Chris | March 1, 2012 - 2:28 pm | , , ,
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March’s Monthly Muse is all things floral. Big or small, bright or pastel, realistic or abstract, anything goes.

Monthly Muse Floral

Not sure what the Monthly Muse is. Each month I will be your Muse by providing an inspiration challenge. The idea is to step outside your comfort zone, try something new and have fun. This group is open to all artistic mediums.

Playing along is easy…you can join in any time throughout the year. Upload your photos to Flickr, add them to the Monthly Muse Flickr group and tag them with the corresponding monthly tag. For example this month’s inspiration will have the tag MM3.

friday the 13th and learning new things

  By Chris | January 13, 2012 - 3:34 pm | ,
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It’s Friday the 13th! My day started out a little frantic…rolled over, looked at the clock and I had overslept. So, I had to hustle to get my youngest ready for school and drive him there, since I slept late enough that he missed his bus. I’m sure this had more to do with the fact that I haven’t been getting enough sleep, than the fact that it’s Friday the 13th.

Onto learning new things. I think it’s important to continually learn new things, whether or not you do something with that knowledge is another matter. My journey with polymer clay began when I took a couple local adult ed classes from a local art teacher one winter for something to do….I tend to be a hermit in the winter. One of the classes was making cutesy Christmas ornaments out of polymer clay. Cutesy isn’t really my style, but I fell in love with the material. The other class I took that winter was painting a paint stick Santa. I enjoyed the class and my Santa turned out very cute, if I do say so myself. It wasn’t something I wanted to pursue, but I’m still glad I took the class.

caterpillar bracelet

The only other art/craft related class I’ve taken was for a beaded caterpillar bracelet several years ago (shown above). Again, I enjoyed the class and learned some new skills, but it wasn’t something I wanted to pursue. I really enjoyed the few classes that I’ve taken, limited as they are. So, why haven’t I taken more classes? Mainly due to lack of local availability and/or lack of funds.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that a local shop (really local as in 3 blocks from my house), offers classes in lampworking, fused glass, wire wrapping, mosaics, stained glass and more. The best part is that the classes are very reasonably priced. Oh yeah, I see many classes in my future. Now, where did that money tree get to? ;)

spring pastels

  By Chris | January 11, 2012 - 2:21 pm | , , , ,
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At the moment, I’m lovin’ the spring pastels. As you may remember, the last color palette of the week (CPAW) for 2011, consisted of Margarita, Sweet Lilac and cockatoo.

Color palette a week - week 52

Today I wanted to share what Veronique Hoffmann (Fimomaus) created with this color palette.

CPAW 52

The combination of the crackle look with the flowers (in the photo below) is very eye catching. Veronique definitely wins the prize for participation in the color palette a week challenge. Ok, there’s not really a prize, but if there were, she would win it. She was far and away the best at keeping up. Be sure to check out Veronique’s other work.

Resultate der Canes von CPAW 52

new monthly inspiration project

  By Chris | January 9, 2012 - 3:30 pm | , , , , ,
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We have a new monthly inspiration project and a new granddaughter to start the new year. We welcomed our granddaughter, Layla Marie, into the world on January 4th. She shares a birthday with her big brother. Not sure how well either of them will like that as they get older. ;)

Granddaughter

While mommy and baby were at the hospital, we had our two year old grandson. I forget how much energy a two year old has…wore me out. Yesterday we had his slightly delayed birthday party.

Grandson birthday

Now on to the new monthly inspiration project…

Monthly Muse

The Muses from Greek mythology are the goddesses who inspire the creation of literature and the arts. Each month I will be your Muse by providing an inspiration challenge. The idea is to step outside your comfort zone, try something new and have fun. This group is open to all artistic mediums.

Playing along is easy…you can join in any time throughout the year. Upload your photos to Flickr, add them to the Monthly Muse Flickr group and tag them with the corresponding monthly tag. For example the first monthly inspiration will have the tag MM1.

And here is the first Monthly Muse inspiration. Mesh and denim shades (Marina, Dark Blue and Twilight Blue).

Monthly Muse January

in the studio – thanksgiving prep and the color purple

  By Chris | November 23, 2011 - 3:17 pm | ,
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I bet you’re wondering what Thanksgiving prep and the color purple have in common. Not a whole lot, other than the fact that they are both things on my mind today. I need to get my behind to the grocery store. Well, as soon as I get off of here and put my shopping list together. :) This afternoon, I’ll be making pies for Thanksgiving dinner. I think studio time is going to be nonexistent today.

Why is the color purple on my mind today? Purple, being my favorite color, is often on my mind, but today I’m thinking purple because the purple issue of From Polymer To Art magazine should be coming out any day now.

Here’s a sneak peak. There I am in the bottom right-hand corner.
From Polymer To Art magazine - purple issue

I hope you all have a safe and wonderful Thanksgiving!

I’m back!

  By Chris | November 16, 2011 - 7:00 pm | , , , ,
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I’m back! Did you miss me?

My trip consisted of driving my parents to Texas and back. The trip was for my step-dad, who has terminal cancer, to be able to see his daughters and grandchildren. While the trip wasn’t for a happy reason, I did get to spend the weekend with my best friend. We have been friends since we sat at the same table in kindergarten, which has been many more years than I like to admit to. ;)

Now, it’s time to play catch up….
Here’s is this past Monday’s color palette a week (CPAW).

For all my polymer clay peeps….if you haven’t seen Lindly Haunani’s guest post on Polymer Clay Daily, please check it out and take the survey!!! Not only is this a chance for your voice to be heard by polymer clay manufacturers, you have a chance to win an autographed copy of Terra Nova – Polymer Art at the Crossroads, released in conjunction with the opening of the Racine Art Museum’s exhibition.

I have email to catch up on, blogs to read and a mountain of laundry calling my name, but maybe I’ll take a little nap first…..

continuing concern over the possible loss of Premo zinc yellow and cobalt blue

  By Chris | July 26, 2011 - 9:33 am | , ,
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Let me start by saying that Polyform Products has NOT said that they will be discontinuing cobalt blue or zinc yellow. However…..

If you work with polymer clay, you should read Carol Simmons’ recent blog post about the POSSIBLE future loss of zinc yellow and cobalt blue and weigh-in with your thoughts. While this issue mainly involves Premo polymer clay, it comes down to a numbers issue (number of sales), which somewhere down the road may affect other brands of polymer clay.

This is something that I brought up in this post when Polyform Products first announced that cobalt blue and zinc yellow would continue to be available through three online retailers.

“Unfortunately the sales will probably not end up being enough to support continuing these colors. The main reason being the limited availability. While the die hard professional artists will order the colors to be able to continue their color palettes, hobbyists will probably not bother.”

Now, let’s take a look at the even bigger picture. Polymer clay artists have worked hard to get to the point where polymer clay is considered an acceptable art medium. Then consider, said artists, having a limited color palette to work with. Imagine for a minute that Vincent van Gogh had denim blue instead of cobalt blue as a primary color to work with for his “The Starry Night” painting. It would be pretty drab, wouldn’t it?


I’ve been asked over and over again if I will continue to do seasonal color recipe ebooks with the “new colors” if it gets to the point that cobalt and zinc yellow are no longer available. The short answer is NO. The longer response is that I may continue to do color recipe ebooks, but they won’t be based on a specific seasonal color palette like they are now because there would be too many colors that can’t be matched without cobalt blue and zinc yellow.