Who am I?
My name is Olga Nicolas, I am an artist and instructor in contemporary jewelry.
Since 2014, creative work has become my main activity. However, my first professional choice remains teaching.
To transmit, explain, and guide... this is an essential dimension of my work. It is therefore natural that I offer jewelry-making workshops and classes.
My artistic journey
Since I was a teenager, I've always had a need to work with materials.
Painting, pottery, basketry, enamels on copper... I've explored many practices, guided by curiosity and the desire to understand materials.
In 2005, I discovered the polymer clay almost by chance, while testing a tutorial I found online. It was an immediate click.
This medium offered me a freedom of expression that I hadn't found elsewhere.
Today, I mainly work with polymer clay, often combined with other materials like metal. My approach is centered on Surface techniques Textures, overlays, material effects.
I favor a sober base (black or white) to which I add color using various mediums: paints, pigments, inks, pastels…
My approach and what drives me
For me, creating is experimenting.
Behind every piece of jewelry, there are many trials, errors, and adjustments. I test, I make mistakes, I start over… until I achieve a result that makes sense.
This process is an integral part of my work.
I constantly seek balance: between materials, between shapes, between solid and void. This search is at the heart of my creations, particularly in my work combining polymer clay and metal.
“Little Pebbles”
The name of my site, P'tits Cailloux which means “little stones”, came very naturally. Initially, I imagined my jewelry as small, raw elements, fragments to be assembled to enhance a person.
But over time, that name took on another dimension.
The “little stones” are also the traces we leave in the lives of others, and those that others leave in us. My journey, like everyone else's, is marked by these encounters and influences.
My Approach to Teaching
I build each course around:
- a specific technique,
- a focus on texture and material,
- a jewelry model,
- and efficient mounting solutions.
I attach great importance to proposing methods clever, accessible, and reproducible, with limited equipment.
But beyond the technical aspects, these workshops are also moments for sharing, exchange, and meeting new people. That's what makes them so rich.
My publications, interviews, and tutorials
ELLE MAGAZINE (November 2009)
I was just starting to offer training workshops when a journalist contacted me to highlight this new development.
POLYMERS & CO (French magazine)
September 2013
The tutorial, written at the request of the editorial team, was about my coloring method. In it, I showed how I used dry pastels diluted with alcohol to tint transfers onto polymer clay. The jewelry created for this tutorial had been featured on the cover of the magazine. It was the very beginning of this magazine, as it was the third issue.
POLYMER ART BLOG (American Blog)
February 2014
Spotlight on a black and white necklace with silver foils on a blog highly regarded by the international polymer clay community.
POLYMERS & CO (French magazine)
Portrait Interview
May-June 2015
In this interview, I was already talking about my love of research, experimentation, and the interest in testing things for myself.
POLYMERCLAY DAILY (American Blog)
May 2015
Highlighting reversible earrings on which I used my first attempts at threaded polymer stems.
POLYMER ART (American magazine)
Spring 2017
Portrait and article on collaborative work with Sylvie Peraud regarding the «Elegant Connections» project.
POLYMERWEEK (Czech magazine)
Winter 2018
Article on the creative process
POLYMERWEEK SOCIETY (Czech website)
Summer 2021
Interview
Polymer week is a very reputable site in the international polymer world; unfortunately, it is only accessible to members.
