First Forays with Polymer Clay

We are doing a spring cleaning here and as I rooted through various boxes I uncovered items that followed my first explorations with polymer clay! 

This is my first ever polymer clay project.  I was in art school and made a pair of earrings to match a painting I had in an exhibition. Here's one of the earrings, it's partner is missing. I had no idea about the cane concept then- it's assembled in a blob-technique.

I spent a couple of years making soap until I decided I preferred making the labels to making the soap. These were my Soap Stones... I would get a stone effect by grating different colours of cold process soaps then hand forming the rounded chunks  into stone shapes. I made the paper mache boxes by hand too. If you look very closely at the label on the box to the right, there's a tiny polymer clay bead hanging from the tag...it was at that time I began making polymer clay BeachStones" to hang from the tags...this led me to joining online polymer clay groups.

Along with soap in the 90s I was involved in paper arts and I went to the Alternative Artfest in Bellevue, Washington. I took a Gourd workshop with Gloria Skrovonsky and became hooked on gourd art. It wasn't long before polymer clay became the primary embellishment on the gourds and gradually I simply left the gourds behind.

Here's a gourd with a slab of stamped black clay highlighted with Rub n' Buff

I'm going to get back to the spring cleaning- it might take a while... full time claying commences next week.