Winkelen Vandewinkle

My emphasis is on design: color, texture, shape and form. Whether it's beadwork, polymer clay, fabric crafts, art dolls, mixed media, or precious wire, I put my very best into every item I create. I'm working to make my website a place for my own hand-crafted work as well as kits and companion items for the classes I teach around the Eastern half of the United States. On my eBay Store site, you will find other items including extras from my own crafts stash and a few of my art items here and there. I'm conducting an experiment with this new eBay Store to see how it goes, so watch for changes on this site in the coming weeks, and thanks for your support while I figure out how to best set up my web presence.

I have been working in polymer clay for over a decade and remember back when there weren't quite so many choices in the brands of clay available. I use Fimo Soft and Premo almost exclusively, though from time to time I will experiment with mixes of other artist-quality clays to achieve particular effects. My love of seed beads goes back even farther, so it was only natural the two should merge at some point.

That point came for me several years ago when I started to bead faces into pins and pendants. There were few sources for faces that I thought were attractive and they were too expensive for the amount of work I like to do. So I turned my polymer bead-making experience to cabochon making and started with the commercially-available face molds. You can still see some of these early pieces on my Gallery pages. I soon grew beyond what was available commercially, since I thought most of those faces too cartoon-ish or ugly for my purposes. I began to sculpt my own. This was time-intensive and impractical since each face had to be sculpted from scratch. I then turned to mold-making and the rest, as they say, is history.

I make my molds from my original sculptures, vintage pieces, and other carvings. I customize both the molds and the pieces made from them. I experiment with shapes and clay techniques, as well as with additives and mixed media. I continue to evolve and grow, selling a few of my extras as I move along my path of discovery. This helps me buy more clay and support my art, and I'm grateful to all those who have helped me do so.