Beauty in Old Clay

If you haven’t seen this technique, created about a decade ago by France’s Dominique Franceschi, you really have to try it. Like Monday’s post, this too came out of an accident, one many of us have probably experienced to some degree. It was from dry, crumbling clay, once again ruining our expectations. Well, Dominique took that experience and ran with it and what a beautiful texture arose from playing around with this stuff.

Basically, she extruded some older clay and it cracked all up and down the length of it. Instead of tossing it, she wrapped it around base beads, flattened and smoothed the clay, and ended up with these beautiful, organic looking textures. Wonderful stuff.

Her full technique was shared and translated on Parole de Pâte way back in 2006. But just because it’s an older technique doesn’t mean that it can’t be new or newly played with. Try it out and maybe you’ll even have some pleasantly unexpected outcomes by using it slightly differently such as laying it on a sheet to create surface designs that can be made into jewelry or wrapped around boxes. Or what would these cracked snakes look like and how would you use them if you tried just smoothing out the snakes alone? In any case, it would certainly be fun to play with.

Find the simple steps and a couple of options for these beads on Parole de Pâte here.

All in a Line

March 26, 2015

annetulpe tube beadsTube beads–they are round straight lines. Yeah, I know … sounds a little simplified and obvious but think about it. Round and straight don’t usually go together, but here we are, able to put the two together. My mother says I have never lost my childlike wonder of the world, and I guess she must be right since something as simple as a tube bead can still rather fascinate me.

Not only do tube beads have two seemingly disparate characteristics, they easily embody both the softness of their round aspect and the directionality of their straight lines. They can also be staccato by lining up short versions or hold long notes by being thin and lengthy. They can, like most beads, hold a tremendous amount of detail in a small space, such as the tube beads you see here by Annerose Doerling. The many colors and visual textures are just so yummy.

Now, here is the cool part. Annerose’s tube beads have been blogged about before, and it was revealed back then (some seven or so years ago) that she was working with a technique created by Dominique Franceschi that she found on another blog a couple years before that. The wonder of the Internet has preserved the links and the corresponding posts, so … tada … you can go back in time and see how old, very dry and crumbly clay can be turned into such gorgeous elements as these beads here. You can go to the Parole de Pate post here to see the super easy technique, but then you might want to bounce on over to Annerose’s Flickr pages to see how she perfected the technique and the finish for them. I’m sorry to say I couldn’t find any recent work by either the creator of the technique or her apt pupil, but I hope they are both out there still creating with childlike wonder and abandon.

 

If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or an issue of The Polymer Arts magazine, as well as by supporting our advertising partners.

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Beauty in Old Clay

January 31, 2018
Posted in ,

If you haven’t seen this technique, created about a decade ago by France’s Dominique Franceschi, you really have to try it. Like Monday’s post, this too came out of an accident, one many of us have probably experienced to some degree. It was from dry, crumbling clay, once again ruining our expectations. Well, Dominique took that experience and ran with it and what a beautiful texture arose from playing around with this stuff.

Basically, she extruded some older clay and it cracked all up and down the length of it. Instead of tossing it, she wrapped it around base beads, flattened and smoothed the clay, and ended up with these beautiful, organic looking textures. Wonderful stuff.

Her full technique was shared and translated on Parole de Pâte way back in 2006. But just because it’s an older technique doesn’t mean that it can’t be new or newly played with. Try it out and maybe you’ll even have some pleasantly unexpected outcomes by using it slightly differently such as laying it on a sheet to create surface designs that can be made into jewelry or wrapped around boxes. Or what would these cracked snakes look like and how would you use them if you tried just smoothing out the snakes alone? In any case, it would certainly be fun to play with.

Find the simple steps and a couple of options for these beads on Parole de Pâte here.

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All in a Line

March 26, 2015
Posted in

annetulpe tube beadsTube beads–they are round straight lines. Yeah, I know … sounds a little simplified and obvious but think about it. Round and straight don’t usually go together, but here we are, able to put the two together. My mother says I have never lost my childlike wonder of the world, and I guess she must be right since something as simple as a tube bead can still rather fascinate me.

Not only do tube beads have two seemingly disparate characteristics, they easily embody both the softness of their round aspect and the directionality of their straight lines. They can also be staccato by lining up short versions or hold long notes by being thin and lengthy. They can, like most beads, hold a tremendous amount of detail in a small space, such as the tube beads you see here by Annerose Doerling. The many colors and visual textures are just so yummy.

Now, here is the cool part. Annerose’s tube beads have been blogged about before, and it was revealed back then (some seven or so years ago) that she was working with a technique created by Dominique Franceschi that she found on another blog a couple years before that. The wonder of the Internet has preserved the links and the corresponding posts, so … tada … you can go back in time and see how old, very dry and crumbly clay can be turned into such gorgeous elements as these beads here. You can go to the Parole de Pate post here to see the super easy technique, but then you might want to bounce on over to Annerose’s Flickr pages to see how she perfected the technique and the finish for them. I’m sorry to say I couldn’t find any recent work by either the creator of the technique or her apt pupil, but I hope they are both out there still creating with childlike wonder and abandon.

 

If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or an issue of The Polymer Arts magazine, as well as by supporting our advertising partners.

  tpa-blog-125x125-2015 LP-PA-FoilsDf0215   ice cream ad  TPA_McGuire_blog ad;

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