Craft skill transfers to jewelry art

CARY -- Lauren Van Hemert was craving connections with other stay-at-home moms after moving to Cary from Miami six years ago with her husband, Grant, and their then 1-year-old son.

"When I first got here, I met this woman at Bond Park who said she scrapbooked and rubber stamped. I had no idea what that was," Van Hemert said, "but I said to Grant, 'I don't care what it is, I'm doing it.'

"She invited me to her house to do it with this incredible group of crafty women. I started making mostly cards. I guess I was artistic, but I didn't know that," said Van Hemert, who had worked in health and safety.

Three years ago she started making jewelry from polymer clay, a plastic-based material that is sculpted and then fired. Using the photo transfer techniques she learned while making cards, Van Hemert covers beads with images of vintage labels, turning her craft into artistic pieces of nostalgia.

First, a tablecloth: "My scrapbook group loved these Longaberger baskets, and I was going to these basket [buying] parties and I thought, OK, I would rather know how to make something. So I'm going to have a party and we'll learn how to make them," Van Hemert said.

"For my mom I had made this tablecloth where I ironed on family photos. I hadn't given it to her yet, so I used it for the centerpiece. If you can iron something on a T-shirt you can iron something on a tablecloth. No one was interested in the baskets but everyone wanted to know how to make that tablecloth. That's about the time I started teaching."

A way with clay: "I started making jewelry, and because it's so nice and lightweight, I started making big necklaces." The store Raindrops on Roses in Raleigh asked Van Hemert to teach a photo transfer class using vintage cigar labels they planned to sell. "I had read about this transfer technique using gin. I didn't really believe that it worked. It was so challenging. I went to throw my piece away, and I thought, if I can crumble it up to throw it away, I bet I can wrap it around a bead." And so she did.

From class to cash: During a polymer clay workshop with author and artist Irene Semanchuk Dean of Asheville, Dean noticed Van Hemert's necklace, made of polymer beads covered with vintage cigar labels. "Because she had much more knowledge about polymer clay than I did, she knew that no one was wrapping a colored image around a three-dimensional object. Most polymer clay artists, when they do transfers, they do one-dimension flat transfers. So it's really become my signature technique," she said. Dean urged Van Hemert to stop teaching and start selling her artwork.

Craft to art: "Somehow it went from church shows to doing the Baltimore show," she said of the American Craft Council's juried show she attended in February.

"A year ago I was juried in to Artspace [in Raleigh], and I would say that really was the catalyst that changed me from being more of a hobbyist to a business. And I went from being a technician to making a work of wearable art."

Along with her two local galleries, this year she picked up six others from outside of the Carolinas. She also won several awards, was chosen for an HGTV segment and was included in the book "Best of North Carolina Artists and Artisans 2005." She recently was interviewed by Southern Living for an upcoming article.

Telling stories: Over time, Van Hemert's jewelry has become more elaborate and she has added finer components, such as gold freshwater pearl coins and precious-metal clay. Her themes have grown to include Paris and travel, mostly using vintage luggage tags.

"I want my pieces to be one-of-a-kind, distinctive," Van Hemert said. "I choose only images I have a connection to. At the beginning I just wanted pretty jewelry, but now I want pretty pieces that tell a story."