Lost in colorful Nambi world

Is already the end of March? Where did the time go?
Each winter has freezing and paralyzing effect on me. This past one was fairly long and cold and I slowed down a bit. But I was moderately busy and highly creative. At the end of the last year I revisited my Nambi tutorial and gave it several new spins. I am still hooked up and I keep making new things with this tutorial.

The original tutorial is made in English language and it can be found in my Etsy shop. Additional text files (translations) are now available in Spanish, French and Dutch languages too.

I also started a secret FB Nambi group for everyone who purchased a tutorial. We call ourselves Nambians. New members are added with every new purchase. My goal is to add more value to people who support my artistic journey by purchasing this tutorial.
I share new discoveries there as I go; I add new ideas, share thought and make mini tutorials. Nambi girls are explained there in detail, paints and new ways of coloring, using various tools, questions are answered. We share our work and discuss how to improve it.

If you are interested feel free to join us. The more the merrier! Once you purchase a tutorial I will send you an invitation via email or you can add me as a friend on Facebook.
Once I add you to Nambi group feel free to unfriend me, I am not trying to trick people to have more friends. I can only invite people to the group if we are Facebook friends or via email.

Between December and present day I made some pretty and colorful Nambi stuff:

1. Boxes and vessels

2. Nambi Girls necklaces and brooches

3. Tribal mask earrings

4. Owl earrings and necklaces

5. Orange necklace

and

6. Pocket mirrors

There are possibly more photos of my work in my Flickr and Facebook albums.

Join Nambians if you feel inspired there's so much more that can be done with this technique.
Stay safe, cool and positive I am going back to my claying table.

Cactus mania

I just finished an interesting project. It all started with a sweet email from a cactus lover wondering if I am willing to do a custom order for her. She admires my work and was willing to give me full freedom to make fridge magnets with cactus theme. Naturally, I was intrigued.

Once in childhood I actually had a window full of potted cactuses (or is it cacti, I am never sure) and I even sat in one, which was an unfortunate experience, as you can imagine. Once in my teen and young adult years I had a house full of pot flowers of all kinds. I loved and took care of them and they loved me back.
Suddenly, about 15 years ago it all stopped. I don't know exactly why but I lost interest in house plants. Fast forward to my recent project I realized as much as interesting this assignment might be it will be challenging. I had to familiarize with the house plants once again and with those with thorns!

So this project quite unexpectedly turned into a study. My customer wanted bright magnets to stand out so I decided to use my Nambi technique.

I found a book of flowers and actually made detailed sketches. Since I am not familiar with the material I had to see how it will turn out in clay within Nambi technique. Surprisingly, I had so much fun in the process of sketching. Most of the time, for my polymer clay projects I just use very primitive drawings. This time I took time to color the sketches too.
Since both customer and I were pretty happy with sketches, I used my template paper to copy the shape that will become a magnet.

I use this template paper for years, it is sturdy and somewhat transparent, allows making original templates made based on your drawings which can be used many times. You can find this template paper in my Etsy shop.

After that the whole project has gone awry. Right about Halloween my oven decided to play a trick on me and burnt me two batches of these magnets and a batch of beads for another customer. It was crazy! I was mad and cried and tried to eat my misery away.

By the time this third batch got to the oven, they were made quickly and looked great! It is proven that practice makes it perfect after all. I put two thermometers in the oven and sat in front of it the whole baking time. Tell me about being dedicated to the project! They were baked perfectly and were ready for finishing.

Cactus magnets are colorful and vibrant, I like them very much. My customer is happy, apart from purple color on the pot. But since she forgot to mention it in advance, she says she can live with it. Once they were finished I attached magnets to their back.

It is always fun to revisit a technique once developed and make something different with it then jewelry. Nambi tutorial is available in my Etsy shop if you are interested.

I hope you will find these magnets interesting as I do. Leave a comment or a question if you wish to.

Zentangle

I have been ill for days, got a flu or virus or whatever that keeps me from breathing properly, getting up and doing stuff. Yes, I admit that I am a pretty lousy patient. Blessed with my health and immensely grateful for it, I rarely get ill but when I do I am cranky.
It's fine to catch up with TV shows and movies for two days but then it gets boring. I couldn't get out of a bed because I was really sick but as soon as my nose stopped running so badly I got myself paper and several fine liners. I was aiming to have some fun. And I did.

I always doodled something, since I was a kid. These doodles changed from flowers to hearts to lines to something mixed and matched. I don't have a clue about drawing but I love holding a pencil or fine line marker and using dots and lines to make patterns and "little drawings". I didn't think much of it.

Then I started working with polymer clay and everything else was forgotten including doodling, cross-stitching, crochet, decoupage etc. But then in 2009 it suddenly flashed back into my life. I made it in polymer clay. So funny how I forgot about this ceramic tile covered in polymer clay (I suddenly remembered while writing this story). Looking at it right now I can remember how much work I put into it, being an inexperienced self taught clayer and how happy and proud I was with my little tile.


I really started doodling again in 2011. I was traveling to nearby town to teach workshops and had spare time in train and bus, so I started drawing again. Most of these are small doodles or drawings in my notebooks used in that time but I have two or three larger drawings on A4 size paper. It was then that I learned that these drawings had a name and it was pretty cool one: zentangles!

Google says: "Zentangle is a self-help art therapy practice to enhance relaxation and focus. Zentangle is known to many artists and craftivistas as a way to create structured designs through drawing various patterns." How cool is that? There is a Zentangle Method, a step by step on How to make a Zentangle and also a great Guide to drawing pens so feel free to explore and try it yourself (if you haven't already).

I read about it but did not follow any particular rule. I follow my thoughts and intuition, draw and explore excited to see how will it end. It was actually zentangling that got me inspired to develop my Nambi technique in 2012. It is a lot of lines and some dots in polymer clay with some color on top of it. It was so much fun to add color and a lot of new possibilities occurred. In case you are not sure what am I talking about here's one photo:

There is a step by step PDF tutorial in my Etsy shop if you are interesting in learning this technique and it can be found here.

Back to present and my sick days: I made several drawings/ zentangles that I have been posting on my Instagram and FB account. Google is absolutely right, they are therapeutically! I had fun, my mind was calmer and I was feeling less guilty for staying in bed for days. I was creative. It made my soul sing. It made me happy.

Now I am better and I'll be leaving my fine line markers in a drawer because of a piled up chores and orders. So before saying goodbye to zentangles, for a while at least, I wanted to share my latest one: dancing flower girl or freedom or happy or retro. I couldn't decide about a title so it remains No name. The photo is not the best but that is it for now.

Let me know in the comments your thoughts on doodling, zentangling, drawing, nambi..... are you doing any of this?
Now, excuse me I have to go a lot of things are awaiting to be done.