Drawing almost 14,000 attendees from all across the globe, the week-long 2008 Bead & Button Show in Milwaukee, WI offered a wealth of classes in a variety of mediums. Polymer/Mixed Media artists including Gwen Bernecker, Robert Dancik , Grant Diffendaffer, Celie Fago , Marla Frankenberg, Christi Friesen, Patti Kimle, 

For those more inclined, the marketplace was filled with a treasure-trove of booths that contained beads of every imaginable medium, finished jewelry, findings, tools, supplies and more.  Polymer artists with booths included Barbara McGuire, Janet Pitcher, Lynne Ann Schwarzenberg and Pam Wynn.

In remembrance of the 1.5 million children who perished in the Holocaust, the Butterfly Project was created by the Holocaust Museum Houston.  Participants from all over the world are contributing handmade butterflies that will eventually form a breathtaking exhibit that honors those lost lives.

The Israeli Polymer Clay Guild has posted photos of the polymer butterflies they created for the exhibit, and they invite other guilds or individual artists to participate as well.  Better hurry, though…the deadline for submissions is June 30, 2011. The exhibition will be mounted in 2012.

Photo Courtesy of the Israeli Polymer Clay Guild

   The ACRE show of April 2008 was a triumph for the NPCG. The Board is already working on 2009’s program based on the measurable successes of this year. We met our Guild Objective “to educate the public about polymer clay, and to study and promote an interest in the use of polymer clay as an artistic medium.” We are succeeding in changing polymer’s perception in the wholesale world.

The June 2008 edition of the National Polymer Clay News e-newsletter is available for download in PDF format. To download a PDF copy of the newsletter, NPCG members must log in to the web site. Go to the NPCG Documents folder in our Downloads area. Select the Monthly e-Newsletters folder.

The newsletter was e-mailed to all members on May 30. Members with no e-mail address or who have opted out of the mailing will recieve a copy via postal mail. If you have not recieved your copy, please ensure that you have added the "execdir @ npcg.org" e-mail account to your approved senders list. Additionally, please ensure that the e-mail address in your membership record is current.

The National Polymer Clay Guild is proud to announce “Progress & Possibilities ‘08”, our fourth international juried exhibition, open to all NPCG members.  Each artist may submit up to 3 different entries; entry fee is $25. Details for on-line submission of work will be coming soon!

The “work” must be:

• at least 1/2 Polymer Clay;
• original work of the artist submitting;
• made between 09/01/07 and 09/01/08; and
• not previously published or pending within any other contests.

The National Polymer Clay Guild is pleased to announce the jurors for the 2008 Progress and Possiblities Exhibition. There are four groups of jurors, one for each category:

Art Jewelry
Functional Objects
Sculptural Objects
Best of Show