Polymer Clay Artists Guild of Etsy

One of the coolest traits of polymer clay is its ability to fake it. A skilled artist can make polymer clay look like all sorts of natural materials. Check it out:

Polymer clay “wood”

Polymer clay “turquoise”

Polymer clay “leather”

Polymer clay “stones and gems”

Polymer clay “ceramic, opal and ivory”

All of these beautiful faux pieces are creations by the artists of PCAGOE. And even more are coming soon in our April Faux challenge. Visit our flickr challenge pool for details on entering or voting in the challenge.

www.bdbear.etsy.com

From Willow Grove, Pennsylvania comes Barbara Poland-Waters of XO Candles and Clay.

Barbara first experimented with polymer clay back in the
mid-90s, but didn’t really enjoy working with it until
early 2004 when she learned how versatile the medium could
be.  She started out trying one or two tutorials, covering
boxes and tins, and gradually went on to making beads and
other jewelry.

She says, “I find it to be a wonderful medium that allows for so much creativity because of the many different uses for it. It can mimic items like glass, wood, gemstones and more. You can finish it with a glaze or sand and buff it until shiny. “Barbara makes beautiful polymer clay handles for silverware as in the picture on the right.

She took a hiatus from claying in 2007, due to her pregnancy and caring for a newborn, but now tries to get in some claying time each day in spite of her duties as
SAHM to her 18 month-old.  She currently focuses on making mosaic and letter tiles, which she creates with all different textures and various coloring materials and tops
off with Kato liquid for a glass-like shine.

She hopes to branch out into other projects as soon as her son lets her play with clay for more than 15 minutes at a time. Barbara has a great collection of letter tiles for scrapbooking (just one way they can be used) in her Etsy store.

From her feedback: “Thank you so much! They are perfect! Exquisitely crafted, fine attention to detail, lovely colour transitions. I love the silvery sheen too. My daughter will love them–I want my own set now too!”

The PCAGOE April challenge theme is “faux.” Read about it here.  So how about some inspiration? How can we cleverly disguise our polymer clay as another medium? Here are some tutorials from around the web.

Abalone     Turquoise     Opal

Jade     Amber     Bone     Wood

Have ideas or tutorials of your own to share? Leave them in the comments. Entries are due March 28, 2009. Can’t wait to see the polymer clay faux creations!

Many thanks to all the challenge entrants and voters. This month’s theme was a toughie - polymer clay cane work - and we had 23 beautiful entries. The winning entry is this amazing set of pomegranate cane work by Cristalline.

In second place is this gorgeous rainbow suncatcher by polymerclaycreations.

And coming in third, fourth and fifth, all within one vote of each other, are Rainstick by divadea, Madame Butterfly by beetreebyme, and Winter? I Scoff! by cocojaneandme.

Our randomly drawn voter prize winners this month are:

 Kathi Nesburg

 Kathy Gedrich

and

 Becky

Next month’s challenge theme is “faux,” and the challenge is to make polymer clay look like another material, like wood, gems, fabric, stones, leather… Entries are due by March 28, 2009. Read the full info here. Convo divadea on etsy if you have any questions.

 Thanks for playing. See you next month!