Creation at Your Fingertips
China Today, January 23, 2017 Adjust font size:
Gao majored in pre-school education at a vocational school. She worked in a kindergarten for two years before resigning from her job in 2011. “I was not thinking about starting my own business when I quit my job,” she said. I just wanted to relax for a while. Luckily, I benefited a lot from the rapid development of We Media. The Internet provided a platform for me to become an independent artist.”
“Years ago, when Weibo [a Chinese social network and microblog] became popular, I often published photos of my works on my channel and interacted with other art lovers,” Gao recalled. “For a while I was fascinated by carving rubber stamps. Some netizens asked me about the price of my stamps after seeing my work, or asked me if I could create personalized stamps for them. From then on, my hobby brought me some income. Although it wasn’t much, I felt very happy.” Regardless of the varied requirements, Gao always strives for excellence during the production process. Her rubber stamps feature delicate lines and attractive color combinations and have caused a stir amongst netizens.
Giving Artworks “Soul”
Before using polymer clay, Gao began with super lightweight clay. After making comparisons, she found that polymer clay is better when modifying details. In 2013, she received two succulent plants as a gift from her friend. Looking at their fleshy leaves, she thought this juicy texture could be reproduced by using polymer clay, so she embarked on a round of experiments to make polymer clay succulents.
Gao’s handmade polymer clay desserts.
Polymer clay actually contains no clay minerals. It sets at a low temperature, which means you don’t need a kiln; any standard kitchen oven will do. Polymer clay, which looks like playdough, is said to have been invented by a German woman, who sold the formula to a company and that was how the earliest brand of polymer clay was created. As this material is easy to model, it soon became popular, and since then it has become popular with a large number of handicraft lovers.