Local artist molds jewelry into life

AAngela Walsh of the Biltmore community cruised online to Etsy one day, searching for just the right gift to give her “hippy,” unique-loving daughter. Walsh and her husband, Sam Maney, have two girls between them –Abigail and Samantha – and Samantha is the mother to their grandchild, Samira.

Anyway, back to Etsy.

Walsh’s eyes engaged with all the earrings she saw on the site, especially those made with something called polymer clay. As Walsh scanned Etsy’s offerings, it occurred to her that she could do this herself.

“I’m kind of crafty,” she said. “I’ve always been sewing and crocheting and such. I thought to myself – I could do this jewelry making, too.”

She headed out to a local craft store and brought home her first batch of clay blocks. And then she got to work.

“It looks similar to Play Doh,” Walsh explained about this particular clay. “But you have to condition it. After cutting it and baking it, it becomes hard yet still flexible to manipulate.”

After it is molded, polymer clay is heated in an oven for a minimum of 20 minutes per onefourth inch of thickness measured at the thickest spot, so said Sarah Sarah Stearns of sarahmaker.com, a craft website. The clay is somewhat flexible when it comes out of the oven and has not yet cooled, which is how the piece is cured. The time before curing is when the artist can make special bends and connections between pieces to make a one-of-a-kind product.

The clay can also be made with different textures thanks to various “cutters,” which are used to create patterns in the clay.

*STORY BY ANGELA CUTRER AND PHOTOS CONTRIBUTED*

Walsh first sits with her clay and cutters and quietly thinks as she looks at both. “I get my inspiration by looking and thinking of how they will work together,” she said. This can lead to earrings that are Art Deco styled, are shaped like pastel-colored Easter eggs or are jewelry pieces with markings that mimic water droplets, just as examples.

The final product is water resistant and super lightweight.

“Once you wear earrings made of this, it’s really hard to go back to

Walsh, 52, uses her creative spirit to keep herself grounded. “I’ve always found things to do,” she said. “It’s a good outlet for my anxiety. I’ve always done something with my hands so that I keep busy and don’t dwell on things. It has always helped to not let things bother me and [making crafts] is a good outlet.”

The name of Walsh’s business came about because she has always wanted an otter and a llama, but “having an otter is kinda illegal, so one day I’ll have a couple of llamas,” she said with a laugh. One day she saw a photo of a smiling llama and “it looked so happy, so I became ‘The Happy Llama.’ It’s kinda dorky, but my dream is to have a llama one day.”

A member of the camel family, llamas are native to South America, where they are used mainly as pack animals, but also as a source of food, wool, hides and tallow candles.

These social beasts are slenderbodied animals with long legs, necks and pointed ears, and have small heads and short tails.

Llamas are happy in a group, but when annoyed, they spit. They just can’t help themselves in that regard. (They also are prone to hissy fits with a lot of kicking when you are unkind to them, so, you know, you should learn to be especially patient when dealing with them.)

Luckily, Walsh is a pretty patient woman. She had her first sale on Feb. 1, 2021, (she remembers it vividly) through her Facebook page, The Happy Llama by Angie. “We now have 427 members and I have sales every two weeks on Facebook Live,” she said.

Currently, Walsh is working on Easter items such as bunnies and carrots. Her favorites to work on are earrings, but she also makes bracelets and necklaces.

Her styles tend to run toward pastels, but she branches out to darker hues when working on southwestern- and Aztec-inspired items.

“I like to blend colors, too,” she said. “If you are working with polymer clay and don’t like how it’s working out, you can ball it up and start again. However, you can’t ever get that color combination again – it was just random that you had multiple colors to ball up that day.”

In her lighter colors, Walsh makes birds and shapes. In the darker colors, she creates moons and stars. “I like to use resin on those,” she said. “It makes them super shiny. But I like matte as well. When I make tulip flowers with a cutter that makes it look like organic pebbles, it’s so pretty.”

Walsh said she’s seen a lot of other artists who bring their own unique aesthetic to their work. “I’ve seen polymer clay jewelry in a Spanish style with a lot of contrast and terra cotta colors,” she said. “Sometimes I just like to do simple designs in a matte pastel color myself.”

Walsh will be at a women’s civic craft show March 24-25 and in Johnson County later at a fundraiser for one of the schools, where popular bluegrass musician Carson Peters will perform. She’s looking forward to selling her wares there and meeting new people.

In addition to her clay crafts, Walsh makes soothing eye pillows, bowl coozies, fabric key chains and cast iron pot handle protectors.

She also has her eyes on the future, which she hopes will include creating “junk journals” and teaching others how to make them. She even plans to make her

“I write everything down,” Walsh said of her journaling tendencies. “But junk journals don’t include writings or photos; instead, they include little items others might see as ‘junk.’ For example, in your junk journal you could add a saved receipt with the name of the coffee place you and your best friend visited. Or something else that is just a small little thing that would help you remember how you felt that day during that visit.”

However, expanding her craft work into other directions will have to come later for Walsh. She spends 42 hours a week at her job at East Tennessee ATV, which her aunt, uncle and cousin own. She’s been doing that since 2014 and enjoyed it so much, she invited her husband to join after he left his position as a supervisor for the city’s waste management department. He’s been there for four years.

That means only after work and weekends does Walsh get the time to be creative. “I would like to think that one day this could be my full-time job,” she said.

No doubt, her llama will be peering through her window at her. Hope she doesn’t make it mad.