About Joy Gregory Creative Studio

All my life I have been driven to be creative, I am recently retired but my career was in IT, as a programmer, project manager and lastly running my own web design company, all quite stressful and I found the best way to relieve the stress was to lose myself in creating. I had a particular fondness for painting nudes and was part of the "Starkers" exhibition at a Harrogate gallery.

Retirement from the crazy world of IT was going to give me loads of time to really indulge my creative side, but a new project with my husband took over - we bought a bungalow in a lovely village - which needed some serious renovation - as in completely strip and totally remodel inside and out. However it did give me the opportunity to let my love of colour and design free, I did get some strange looks when we started painting but now it's finished those same people admit it works well and looks beautiful !

I made sure we included a studio/workshop, something I've never had before. I have room for all the different arts and crafts I can now find time for. I made several paintings for our new home, we have red kites that fly over the garden, so of course I had to paint them.

Around this time I discovered polymer clay and what a wonderfully versatile medium it is, I had been to several 'play days' with the South Midlands Polymer Clay Group where I learned some techniques for using it and decided to make wall sculptures, starting with the red kite shown below.

I was really pleased to be asked by the group to use some of my bird sculptures on the Guild stand at the Craft Show at the NEC recently.

Polymer clay is so versatile, I am constantly thinking up new ways to use it, from larger sculptures, clocks, butterflies to smaller jewellery items like brooches. I am also working on a new range of necklaces and earrings that will be in my shop very soon.   

Everything in my shop is designed and hand made just by me, I hope you enjoy looking at them. If you have any questions please get in touch and I'll do my best to answer. I will be adding another blog soon with information on polymer clay and how I use it.