September 2013 Meeting Report

For the September meeting of the London Polymer Clay Group at our new venue, the Greenside Community Centre, 24 people had booked a place online. A very warm welcome to newcomers Eleanor Watson, Marion Lahayville, Eileen Evans from Chester and to Veronique Hoffmann (Fimomaus on Flickr), Angela Garrod’s friend from Germany.

The highlight of the day was Cara Hayman’s demo of her Delft Flower Cane. It started as a demo but as the cane is so intricate the demo became a workshop. The ovens were in full use as slices were baked at each stage of the cane construction. Several people remarked that they now have a much better understanding of how a complex cane is constructed.

Decoman, the European distributors of Kato clay, kindly donated clay for everyone to create their own Delft Flower canes. Several people said that the texture of Kato clay had changed and it was now much softer and easier to condition but that it still had the characteristic Kato smell.

The Show and Tell table had new work and pieces from various workshops that members had attended. We hope more people will bring their polymer pieces to exhibit on the table. There is no limit to the number of items you can place there. If you are having a problem with a piece, bring it along for problem solving and advice from others in the group. Several members had made cakes, fudge and savoury nibbles for everyone and suggested we do this on a regular basis. These tasties were certainly more interesting than the usual box of biscuits.

Ann Parker has added Cynthia Tinapple’s ‘Global Perspectives’ and the Fall edition of the magazine The Polymer Arts to the library. If you would like to join the LPCG library to borrow books, DVDs and magazines, please bring a cheque to the next meeting to cover your deposit. See the link for details.

Veronika Sturdy had some Czextruders for those who had pre ordered them. These brightly coloured extruders are great as they take Makin’s disks. The Early Bird raffle was drawn by Coby Schrijver and won by Bridget Derc winning a refund of her £15 entrance fee.

To save time announcing events during our clay days, we will be putting more information on our website www.lpcg.co.uk and on our Facebook page. Please keep an eye on these websites as we would hate you to miss a vital piece of hot polymer gossip or news of a ‘must have’ piece of kit. Welcome back to Sue Margetts as the LPCG Secretary. She does a great job working behind the scenes with the steering group to keep things running smoothly. Thanks to everyone in helping to get clay day on the road and thanks to Cara for her thorough demo. As a reminder of a successful clay day meeting a group photo was taken.

The next LPCG meeting is 24th November, so mark your diaries and we’ll hope to see you there.

Report by Carol Blackburn Edited and photos by Veronika Sturdy