The polymer spirals in Silvia Ortiz de la Torre’s necklace caught my eye and wouldn’t let go. The colors blend beautifully.

The textures and patterns of the adjacent beads tease us to examine them too. There’s a lot happening here. Could I make a biconal that intruiging?

If you’d like to try, consult Desiree McCrorey and Laura Timmins. Let’s hope you have a lot happening in your studio this weekend!

A bit of sunshine and the UK’s Pippa Chandler is already envisioning a hamlet of beach hut beads.

Her tiny polymer cottages measure 2cm high x 1cm wide with caned doors and windows and textures accentuated with acrylic paint.

With the kids back in school and the house quiet, Pippa’s muse hid for a while. Read her blog to see how she coaxed inspiration out of hiding for this little seaside adventure.

Travel to Australia via France! Isa07 (no real name) revisits a trip to Australia with this Melbourne necklace. She reproduced the colors as she remembered them. Then she built canes and stacks of mokume gane which she combined into a series.

The playful, carefree juxtaposition of the beads take you on a wonderful trip. Travel sensitizes your eye to the color and patterns of a place. These Australian beads from a French perspective seem right on target.

Adam Thomas Rees’ video of his cane-covered polymer foxes gives you a look at how he creates his sculptures (he fires the bases first) and may make you consider working on a turntable (it looks so efficient).

This Utah artist doesn’t reveal how long it took him to shoot these fast forward videos. You’ll be surprised at how he conditions clay and this episode gives you some idea of the size of his original canes. Additional clips on his YouTube page show other animal sculptures in process.

You may want to set aside some time to dig deeper into these links that were sent in by Iris Mishly.

Rebekah Payne gave up on these polymer earrings. She figured she had nothing to lose and baked the sad, scooped out green beads. Then she let them sit around for a while. She layered them with paint and added dots. They started to look better. She hung crystals in the hollows and topped the beads with some wire wrapping. Rebekah calls them her Happy Returns earrings.

This story of persistence and patience is a good one to start the week. Get the full scoop on her blog and scroll through her Etsy offerings. Don’t you have ugly ducklings waiting to become swans?