Scribble Beads, a progression

Judy Dunn has a great post on artistic progression. I had a post contrasting something I really liked very early in my polymer clay work with something from my current work, but it “poofed” with that block of 4 months of posts. The publication of my PolymerCAFE article had me digging through my photo archives to see the progression of my work with “scribble” designs.

The earliest photos I could find of any kind of TLS designs are from Fall 2002:

Not very well defined designs. My goal at that time was to mimic lampwork beads.

Throughout 2003 into 2004, I played around with the technique. I learned how to keep the lines from spreading. But, I had persistent problems with base beads cracking. It was so frustrating. I switched brands of clay, conditioning methods and ovens, and I still got cracks in about a third to half of my base beads. I also started playing around with a couple of different variations:

By 2004, I came up with the idea of glazing the base beads with tinted pearl liquid sculpey to seal up small cracks, mainly because I was tired of throwing away base beads. I loved the look. Tinted pearl liquid sculpey has become a staple in my studio. It gives the surface a soft shimmer a bit like a pottery glaze and highlights texture beautifully.

Beads from the Scribbles In Sand necklace:

I entered that necklace in Bead & Button’s 2004 Bead Dreams competition and came in second in the polymer clay category. Altogether I spent 2 - 3 years refining my technique. During that time, I had a few pieces featured in books. I thought about submitting an article to one of the magazines, but I never got around to it. I’m glad I finally did. Although I still use tinted glazes a lot, I don’t do much with scribble designs anymore. It was fun looking back through the photos and seeing my learning curve and variations. The photos don’t convey the frustrations along the way though. I was obsessed with this for a couple of years, but the process was very worthwhile. It was the first polymer clay work I had done that felt moderately distinctive. You can see a few more photos at Flickr.