Off to Synergy!

I'm about to finish packing everything to be ready to leave for Baltimore and the National Polymer Clay Guild's Synergy Conference. It's exciting to think about all the amazing polymer work that will be on display in the gallery and I can't wait to sit down for each of the seminars that I've signed up for.
Most of my jewelry pieces are packed for the gallery display as well as this necklace that I'm donating to the NPCG silent auction. Quite a ways back I tried my first cane from my own drawing and this iris was the result. From that cane came beads and from those beads came this necklace this week!
My muse has been back in full force in the studio and tomorrow we'll be driving our way to Baltimore for some more inspiration.

Keep the cheer!

From Sketch to Finish

I keep drawing and coming up with sketches and color combinations for polymer clay pieces that I'd like to bring to life someday. When that someday is varies greatly. I'm heading into the end of the school year which will take up more and more time and with spring just around the corner, playing, hiking and gardening in the great outdoors will take more time.

But for now I've actually managed to pull a piece from sketch to a finished necklace. I wasn't happy with the color combination in the sketch so I 'borrowed' another color scheme from a different page in my sketch book. I'm working on really translating size, shape and concept into the actual materials... trickier than I thought.

Blue Spirals...

It's been grey and overcast for most of the day and it started snowing again this afternoon. So I played in the studio stringing up some spiral beads that I had created a few weeks back. It's really nice sitting up in my studio looking out over the river and watching the snow pile up on the branches and pine trees.
The photograph that I posted is from one early morning looking out from our front yard over to the island in the middle of the Hudson River. The sun touches the tips of the trees first and adds some rosy glow and then warms up the rest of the valley. I thought it would be a nice image to link with the blues and spirals of the necklace.

Purple Blooms.

There are beautiful wildflowers at the barn and it is truly amazing what you can catch with a supermacro zoom. The images from the various flowers inspired a series of ten prints. The print here is spotted-joe-pieweed and I believe it is very thistle like. Polymer clay lends itself to such color mixing that you can match colors so well with images. So... what better jewelry to pair the print with that this purple swish & swirl necklace?