Time in a Bottle

I'm off to the City of Brotherly Love to share my love of polymer clay with the ladies of the Philadelphia guild. I'm leaving a day early so I can take some time to do a little sightseeing. I can't believe I'm going to be standing in front of the Liberty Bell tomorrow morning!

Here's a photo of my newest excuse to keep working with these organic chips. It reminds me of a sea slug. I have pages and pages of designs to try but, to borrow a line from an old Jim Croce song, "there never seems to be enough time to do the things you wanna do once you find them . . "

Have a great weekend!

Enviable Design Skills

I know very little about this talented artist. I believe her name is Ingrid and her native language appears to be German. I'm hoping that some of my international readers will see this and be able to give us a bit more information. I ran across Ingrid through a comment she left on one of my Flickr photos. Her profile on that site gives nothing away. Update: This talented artist is Ingrid Ulrich and she is from Germany. You can read the delightful comment she left by clicking on the comment link at the end of this entry.

I'm smitten with her unique designs and these extruded tubes that she arranges in totally brilliant ways. Seeing such fresh work is a great and inspiring way to start the week.

I hope you'll indulge me in a brief bit of shameless self-promotion today, too. After putting it off for a year or so, I've finally managed to put together a "kimcavender" shop in the vast wilderness of Etsy. I'll be listing more things in the coming weeks and maybe I'll even figure out how to fix that sucky banner I have up there now.

Hope your week gets off to a positive start!

Falling Leaves

As far as I'm concerned, fall can't get here soon enough. It's my favorite time of year and it looks like I'm not the only one who's inspired by the wonderful colors and rich textures that nature shares with us during this season. This wonderful ginkgo necklace is from Delphine Roche de Montgrand of France. Her work is, to put it simply, nothing short of incredible.

Who wouldn't be inspired by Camille Young's expertise with Lumina clay and the way she sews these leaves together to fashion beautiful neck pieces like this lariat? These are amazingly realistic looking leaves and I can almost feel how soft and pliable they are.

Eva Ehmeier of Austria has fallen in love with Louise Fischer Cozzi's etching technique and has created this wonderful stylized leaf necklace. Eva's sense of color and design are pure perfection.

Fall hasn't quite reach the mountains of West Virginia but, I'm waiting patiently and I know that soon I'll be rewarded with glorious colors everywhere I look and that wonderful sense of crispness in the air.

Who says you can't do it all?

Elvira Lopez Del Prado of Spain is out to prove them wrong! This multi-talented lady not only works with polymer clay , she also makes magic with felt, fabric, wire, wood, paper, and metal clay. I'm totally taken with her felt designs and the wonderfully appealing colors she uses.

This piece combines her passion for metal clay and polymer. She has a wonderfully organic sense of design, doesn't she? If you'd like to see more of her lovely work, you can also follow this link.

Until I sat down to write about Elvira, I didn't realize how long it had been since I'd posted an entry on this blog. I've been fixated on some new work I've been doing and when I get in the zone, it's hard to break free and even think about writing or trolling around the Internet. Now, back to the clay table!