Third Eye Gypsy(Genea Beads) 2011 by Parigo Studios 2010

Saturday, October 31, 2009

BE and 104 collide into AWESOME II




Hello friends!

Here it is! The long awaited blog of the finished product! So you remember my blog about the BE colors turned 104 right? I thought you might like to see some of the process and the finished product!Picture 1. This was the start of the project. While I was working I thought it would be super sweet to take some pictures of everything coming together.

Picture 2. Here you can see me connecting the flowers.

Picture 3. Finally got those flowers all connected!Picture 4. Making the loop bails.



Picture 5. The finished macrame and finger woven piece.
A little silk and some connecting along with a fancy schmancy pair of earrings....A picture to show the earrings hanging.

Pretty f*ing amazing if you ask me ;) It was hard to part with this one!

I hope you enjoyed the process with me.

Much love,

Genea

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Genea Beads in the Sea Green with Envy Treasury

Hello friends!

I am excited to announce that Genea Beads has been featured in the "Sea Green with Envy" Treasury on Etsy!Why not show some love to the very sweet girl that put this exquisite treasury together! Please visit The Spotted Barn and pick up a special gift for that special someone and support your handmade artisans!

GENEA BEADS ETSY SALE!

Hello friends!

Genea Beads is having a SALE!

Sale items are 25% off!

Check the SALE section daily for new arrivals!


GENEA BEADS @ BEAD RENAISSANCE

Hello friends!

We will be at the upcoming show!

GENEA BEADS SHOW INFORMATION.....

Holy crap! I totally forgot to tell you all that Genea Beads will be at the Bead Renaissance show this year. Ricky and I will be helping out at Dale Nichols booth and I will have a small selection of my beads for sale there. The show is November 6-8th. Hours are Friday & Saturday 10-6, and Sunday 10-5. We hope to see you there!

NEW IN THE SHOP.....
Today I have some more MAGIC for you with a "magic" style pendant on a base of warm golden yellow. Stripes of hot pink are decorated with dots of: turquoise, mint green, and lavender. A cluster of Swarovski crystals dangles from the bottom. Unlike most of my pendants this one is done with 14 karat gold-filled components!


Today's SNEAK PEEK item is a Raku style bone bead called "Chameleon". Beautiful rainbows of Raku speckle the base with dots of swirling color on each bone tip.

WHAT ELSE IS NEW??...

Sadly, not much. I wish I had something super exciting to tell you, but the show is the biggest thing going on.

I still have to finish up Stephanie's sister's necklace before blogging about that and I need to get my other class beads before posting about my class. You can look forward to those exciting blogs soon.

See you then....

Much love,

Genea


Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Green baby!

Hello friends!

I got some odds and ends things done, but nothing to write home about. I am still trying to think of a way to take some stuff I learned in class and apply it to my designs without using the toxic stuff. Still havn't though of anything yet :( I did do some test lentils out of some new colors I got. I will post pictures of those later.

My class beads from day 2 should be in the mail. I hope to get them by weeks end. Maybe I will wait until I get those too before posting about my class.

NEW IN THE SHOP....

Today it's all about LIME GREEN! Mmmmmm! Today's first listing is a "Tinkerbead Fairy" ring. This petit size 5 ring is decorated with a bullseye odd lot swirly lime spacer accented with 3mm crystal ab crystals, a 6mm white opal ab crystal and 3 tinkly teeny bells. It reminds me of fairies :)

Today's SNEAK PEEK item is a set of 3 round beads in styles of : a poked eye, harloquin, and rainbow floating dot bead in colors of: lime green, aqua, teal, and kelly green.

WHAT ELSE IS NEW??...

Well whilst testing out those new colors I fell in love with a color called "okey dokey artichokey". It is sooo pretty! It's like a pale blue and minty green all in one bead! I have a simple bracelet design in my head. I thought of the idea and someone specific that I think needs it.

The weather is beautiful today. It's 62 sunny and breezy. It's hard to focus on being productive today ;) My yard has a blanket of leaves on it that either need to be raked up or mowed over. Eep! Too bad my lawnmower kicked the bucket!

Well I am off....

Much love,

Genea

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

A few new goodies


Hello friends!

Wow! I have been out for a bit huh? I didn't even get a chance to post on here that I was attending Andrea Guarino-Slemmon's class for the weekend. If you have me as a fan or friend on FB you noticed my quick post and link, which also posted on Twitter. Horay for FB, Twitter, and Etsy linking up to eachother. They totally save me time! The class was just incredible! I will post my beads from class in a later blog. I figured since you hadn't seen some new stuff from me in a few days I would start there....

NEW IN THE SHOP....

A fun pair of my Crazy 8's style earrings in pomegranate pink and sky blue in swirly BE odd lots. These dangly earrings are knotted with bright limey cord for lots of texture and visual appeal. Yay!

Today's SNEAK PEEK item is a "Magic Pool Stripe" pendant with a sky blue base, yellow, hot purply pink, and minty green with 3 swarovski dangles.

SO WHAT ELSE IS NEW?.....

Well I wish I could say I was going to regurgetate all of the stuff I learned in class onto some new designs of my own, but can we say TOXIC?! If you don't know enamels and silver leaf and foil are extremely GORGEOUS, but also extremely TOXIC. Those fine particles of glass can get airborne and get into your lungs. The metals can also get into your lungs and cause problems later in life. No oxygen breathing machine for me, thanks! So, for the time being I don't get to use all of those SUPER AMAZING, NO LONGER AVAILABLE ENAMELS. Why do companies that make awesome stuff always decide to close up their doors? We got the pleasure of using Zimmerman powders only to find out that the older man that owned the business has passed away and the kids of the family don't want to take on the family biz. What a bummer!

Ricky and Brandon are going to put their heads together to get me a good ventilation system set up so that I can use my class stuff. So hopefully we can get that all figured out. Then I need to track down a good respirator to filter out all of those fine particles.

I will get some pics of my class beads up sometime later in the week when I get a chance. I want to get back down to my studio to make stuff. I have a few odds and ends I need to work on before making some new stuff. Can you believe it's almost NOVEMBER? Holy crap, where did the time go?!

Well I am going to go get some yummy breakfast and head down to the studio.

Much love,

Genea

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Lime and purple and red all over



Hello friends!

Sorry you havn't seen me in a few days. As you know the class is FAST approaching! I have been doing laundry, grocery shopping and getting all of my glass together.

I have also been busily working on Stephanie's sister's b-day necklace and earrings which is turning out SO amazing! I had this fantastic idea in my head for this KILLER piece and it's unfolding quite nicely. It IS taking me forever though! I have even been taking some step by step pics so you can see the piece come together from the single beads into a WORK OF ART!

So without further adieu...

NEW IN THE SHOP.....

RED, lime and purple! Woo baby! "Cherry Berry Blitz" is a set of 5 round beads with encased and 3-d designs.

Today's SNEAK PEEK item is a a heart from my Passion Heart series. "Exotic" is a fantastic blend of Bullseye odd lot and regular stock glass in tomato red, dreamy lavender and streaky lime with dark green whisps.


I just HAD to post this pic! It is SOOOO pretty! You can see those streaky in the green and some variation in the lavender!

WHAT ELSE IS NEW?...
Well I am still super into working on this b-day gift. I still have a lot to do on it and I want to get it done before moving on to anything else.

I'm not sure if I will be making anymore beads before the class. I did get all of those new colors so I should probably make some sample color lentils out of them to see how they look worked.

I got my laundry all done and folded and my snackies all packed. I still need to get all of my glass and tools together. I will probably do more of that today too.

Well I'm off!

See you soon ;)

Much love,

Genea

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

BE and 104 collide into AWESOME

Hello friends!

As you may have noticed I am getting a WAY late start! I was wisked off to Taco Bueno for free lunch so I started my day there. I then went to see my chiropractor, which is another event not to be missed! We went over to his new practice to help him get some things put back in his car. It is a GORGEOUS location right over in Briar Cliff Village. You can find out more by visiting his clinic at 1201 NW Braircliff Pkwy, Ste 325, KC, MO 64116.

Anywho... on to the good stuff!

**DISCLAIMER**
**Sorry, but I will NOT be taking special orders for the beads shown below.**

So this little entry begins in a studio in Kansas City....

I had this request for a friends birthday to re-create this bead color combination into a set of 3 beads for a necklace that were a bit larger and then 2 smaller inverted colored ones for earrings. I started out with my BE (that is Bullseye glass to the non glass workers ;) odd lots, but after flopping 2 beads I had to come up with something else. Why? Well the glass I was trying to use was an odd lot and I only had one rod of the lime green and that wasn't going to be enough. So that is when I had to get creative....
Here you can see the original glass flower made out of BE odd lots(The bead shown above is currently available in my Etsy shop). The BE freaky, streaky, striker pack was a special addition released by BE for the International Society of Glass Beadmakers when the gathering was in Kansas City about 3ish years ago. This makes glass practically extinct by that time period so re-ordering colors wasn't an option. So here is what I came up with... I looked to my trusty 104 glass palettes to come up with a color combination as close to the original as I could. On the left you can see the currently available 104 glass colors I used to make up these beads: effetre Kiwi, Messy Plum, Messy Simply Berry, and Messy Heart Cored Cane in Cranberry and Gelly's Sty.

The next obstacle was trying to figure out the best way to get the flowers larger, but get the creases all the way down the petals. Trial one started with making a large disc and then cutting the places where the petals would be. As the gamer boys would say"Epic Fail"! As you can see this one didn't turn out....So you would guess using a razor tool right? Well that does work for smaller scale flowers like the one above, but the larger you get you will actually get your tool stuck in the glass and not be able to get it loose before the glass cools which causes a load of other problems! So what did I use instead? Well I went to my local store and got a paint scraper! It creases like a razor would, but is much taller and wouldn't get stuck in my glass!So on to the beads I went and finally SUCCESS!

The BE flower is the smaller one on the top of the picture. The 104 glass flowers are the 3 larger ones on the bottom. Pretty sweet eh?

So for the successful ruffles I creased them with my paint scraper and then used my raking tool(not shown) to heat and pull down the petal creases to their desired placement. You may notice a tiny bit of devit on the petals from the heart cored cane. To keep that to a minimum you need to first put the heart cored cane in the kiln to warm the glass so it isn't shocky. So you begin making your disc in the desired layers until you reach the outer pink. When you are ready, pull out your pink rod from the kiln. BE CAREFUL WHERE YOU GRAB YOUR ROD, it HAS, afterall, been sitting in a 960 degree kiln warming! Add your layer of pink and then begin heating and creasing your petals. Next rake in your petal creases to the desired place. When you are done re-heat all of the pink areas molten in a slightly oxidizing flame. This makes most of the devit disappear leaving a shiny smooth surface. The little bit of devit you see on the petals is actually smooth to the touch and isn't as bad as the camera makes it appear.

Here is a size model of the necklace flowers in my hand. I didn't crop out the rest of the picture because I found it visually pleasing to see the other glass and tools in the background ;)
Here is a picture of the flower with light going through the layers.

Here is a picture of the earring beads. I did one in the inverse color for the earrings like was requested, but found it to not be nearly as pretty as the original order.


I hope you enjoyed my journey through glass and that you learned some helpful tips.

Stay tuned for the finished piece....

Much love,

Genea

Monday, October 19, 2009

A wholotta awesome

Hello friends!

Well the weather has warmed up at bit and the sun has finally peeked out of the clouds. Today it's sunny and 62 degrees. I opened up the house to get some nice fresh air circulating before it gets cold again. I had worried that fall had surpast us since there have been a few frosts already. I don't know that I would call fall weather 69 degrees or anything, but I won't start bitching about the temp until we get one of those 70 degree days in December. When people are outside smiling at the warmth I am cursing our stupidity. Why? Well why do you think there are 70 degree days in the middle of winter? Hmmmm can we say global warming? This is definitely NO reason to celebrate unseasonably warm weather in my opinion. Anyways... I am sure you didn't come to my blog to get my thoughts on the weather ;)

NEW IN THE SHOP....

Black and White, baby! Today's first listing is one of my Chubby Bubble Button's in black and white called "Wicked,". The button shank is black with white freckles that have a spiffy little outline around the white dots from a glass reaction. The button's face is white chubby petals and a black and clear bubble button. This would make a super fun jewelry clasp or a closure for any other creative project you might have going on.
Today's SNEAK PEEK item is a 3 bead set called "Bubblicious". Set includes 2 black and white freckled spacers and one bubble poked eye style bead. This little set would make a cute pair of earrings and a pendant.


NEW AND OLD....

I always like to see how much I have grown artistically and I thought you might like to enjoy it with me. I had to remake an older set for my dear friend, Billie. Kim nabbed up the first set that was made back in '07.Here is a picture of the first set. Ok so I wasn't the best photographer back when I was taking pictures just a few years ago. As you can see I photographed on a bead mat instead of a white surface which I like WAY better ;) Pretty sweet beads huh? These beads were made with TONS of layers and 4 different canes!
Here is the re-make just 2 years later. Much better photographs huh?

DID YOU KNOW I WAS FAMOUS?....

Woo hoo! I am very flattered to have been chosen to be one of Glasscraft's Emerging Artisits :) Here is a photograph of my article featured in The Flow Magazine Fall 2009. Won't you celebrate with me? :D


WHAT ELSE IS NEW??...
I sure do LOVE it when the post man delivers boxes with this contents in them to my door :D:D:D I can't wait to dig in and make something pretty!

My first order of business is actually working with these little guys. This is heart cored cane by Creation is Messy. The one on the left is Cranberry and Gelly's sty heart cored cane and the one on the left is Gelly's sty and peace white heart cored cane. I am actually going to use these canes for their streakiness first before experimenting with the hearts. I am working on a birthday present in 104 glass trying to simulate some of BE's odd lots and making the design work. I will post my findings. Cross your fingers that I can get them to do what I want ;)

LOOK WHAT HOLLY BROUGHT ME!....

So you all should know Holly by now from my posts. She is totally digging on this Amigarumi stuff and looky what she made me!! *dies* It's a super cute little coffee cup! It is supposed to have a face, but she is still trying to track down the right eyes :) Isn't it amazing? :D It' makes me happy :D:D:D

Well I should get going. After this fantastically LONG blog post I am pretty darn hungry! Woo hoo for eggies and bacon!!

Have a fantastic day!

Much love,

Genea

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Fall colors of brown and turquoise


Hello friends!

It's nice to be more back on track with things than I have in the past few weeks.

NEW IN THE SHOP.....

Today I have a set of 9 beads in shapes of: round, lentils, and spacers in colors of cafe au lait brown and turquoise blue.This set features one of my very favorite Messy colors, Smurfy and one of Messy's new colors, Tamarind!

Today's SNEAK PEEK item is a set of 3 beads: 2 spacers and 1 round bead in colors of dark opaque brown, and transparent dark aqua with dark turquoise vine cane dot accents. **Picture appears to be dark blue, but is actually more dark aqua.** It seems like my camera has trouble photographing aqua and teal.

SO WHAT ELSE IS NEW?...

Not too much really... I am finishing up some things around here and beginning work on some Christmas presents. Yeah, I know, scary huh? Well can't hurt to get a jump start right?

Kayla is still on puppy lock down and hating it. Leeloo is also usually penned off with her to keep her company so she doesn't whine, but she is outside enjoying the cool fall weather. We have to keep an eye on Kayla so we don't have any boy dogs jumping our fence. I figure for the most part the girls will bark before one could get over the fence, but you never know...

Later on today we are visiting Stephanie and Lucas and checking out their new house all set up with their stuff. I got to see it when it was empty just before they moved it so it will be really cool to see it with their personality :)

Sorry I don't have more exciting things to report today.

Have a great day.

Much love,

Genea

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Watch out for the EGO

New brag graphic I put together >:D

"Maybe we've met before?"

The dust has settled.... for now

Hello friends!

Wow has it been awhile or what?! Life has been CRAZY to say the least. My sister's wedding and all of the family in town has finally subsided and life can go as back to normal as possible with the holidays right around the corner. So without further adieu here are today's listings....

NEW IN THE SHOP.....

Introducing "Mud Puddles," a collection 5 ivory hinted white lentil base is decorated with swirls of mixed paints in colors of: purple, green, yellow, brown, and blue with a dark muddy outline. This painterly look was made by a combination of "monet's not everything," frit and a mixture of other glasses.Here is a close up shot of the painterly swirls. Pretty sweet huh?

Today's SNEAK PEEK item is "Glimmer" a bead from my "Delicious Pod," series. Bubbles of Raku peek through a transparent pale brown base with raked dots of raku and droplets of transparent clear.
SO WHAT ELSE IS NEW?....

Well as you saw yesterday I got my design done for Art Beads. I was so happy with the results! I was told that I should be on the look out for a tweet about it from "Beadguy" on twitter. Now that I made the first one I want to make a super BRIGHT one as well! Maybe in the future I guess. I will just have to collect some pieces to make the next one ;)

I have a few other things that I want to make into some jewelry so I will be collecting beads for those as well and getting them together. Doesn't it always seem like when you want to work on a project you have like NONE of the supplies you need eventhough you have BOXES FULL OF BEADS? How the hell does that work out? *shrug* meh...

BIG GIRL DOGGIE....

My sweet little baby girl, Kayla has turned into an adult girl dog. She got her doggie period the other day. Boo :( She is the first dog I have ever had that has been in heat. Not really knowing her true age it was hard to guestimate when her maturation would come. When we got her she was much to young for surgery. At any rate we have her penned up on in the area of the house with hardwood floors. She is sulking under the computer desk as I am typing to you. I'm sure she feels pretty crappy and is wondering why she is being put in doggie prison and not able to roam the house or the outdoors like she normally does. I heard that boy dogs are so about getting with girls that they will actually jump a fence to get to them, lovely... So our little girl is on doggie lock down for the next 2 weeks. It's going to be a LONG 2 weeks of tripping over the baby gate and surveying the back yard for outside playtime. Ugh... :(

WHAT'S NEW IN THE STUDIO?...

Good question. I have to look over my list of ideas and see what's next. I have a whole little drawer of items to be photographed for the shop and some things to catch up on from the last few weeks. I really don't want to join the masses of crazy people gearing up for the holidays! Luckily I can hide out in my house out of range of the way-too-early Christmas music that will be blaring out of ever shop speaker as soon as Halloween passes :(

Well I suppose it's about that time. I am off to the studio to go forth and create.

Much love,

Genea

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Art Beads Modular Swarovski Design by Genea Beads

Hello friends!

I am very excited to announce that I will be working in part with www.artbeads.com as one of their designer/bloggers!

September was Art Beads Swarovski crystal design month so this design was made with their Swarovski crystal modular crystals 5150 11x6mm in: golden shadow, light topaz, and crystal copper.

I was SOOOO excited to design this piece because the original design was going to be 2 Swarovski modular crystals with knotted crystals on them. While I was making the bead I had this fabulous idea for a whole necklace design! This pretty much NEVER happens to me so I was SOOOO excited to have the finished project already in my head while working. If you do the design this way you can be sure to make all of the necessary components for your piece during your first lampworking session!Yes, sadly that IS my actual handwriting. You would think for such an artistic person I would have really pretty handwriting, but NOPE, sure don't! I guess my creative energy took all of the juice instead of my actual handwriting. I guess you can't have it all right?! lol Pretty amazing that that sad excuse for scrawling turned in to this fabulous piece! >:D

**All pictures can be enlarged to their full size of 800x800 by clicking on the picture.**

Here is a picture of some of the supplies I used to make my necklace and earrings. Unfortunately I didn't get to shoot a picture of all of the components because I was took excited about making the piece. My mind was so wild with ideas I had to sit down and start working!
Here you can see some of the design in progress. To my surprise the modular crystal holes are actually large enough to fit 1mm leather! Holy Crap! So to my excitement I worked them into the design by sliding them onto the leather and knotting after each pair. To the trained eye you might have noticed the leather in the picture was too short for the finished design.

Here is a close-up of the knotted leather. I usually prefer to make my spacer beads on a 1/16 mandrel because they are smaller and more round, but in this case I had to use a bead hole that would fit 1mm leather doubled. I used a 3/32 mandrel to make the spacers pictured above. They fit the doubled leather perfectly!

I loved the modular shape of the crystals and wanted to mimic that shape for my focal bead. Here you can see a close up of the bead before the embellishments were made.I used all three crystal colors in glass to produce this modular shaped bead along with silvered ivory.
So my original design was to have macramed knotty bails on either side of the focal bead, but how unexpected to macrame around the focal instead! WOW!


I decided to do an asymmetrical design for interest. You can see all of the components that were used for this exciting design! Copper was a perfect metal to use with the earthy brown color palette for fall.
Here is a shot from the left side of the necklace. I LOVE the colored reflection of the crystal on the white shiny surface.


Here is a shot of the right side of the necklace.

As you may know every beautiful necklace is NOT complete without an incredible pair of matching earrings!If you don't know me will I will let you know that I LOVE long earrings! This pair was definitely a "shoulder duster"!
Here is a shot of the necklace and earrings together! I hope you enjoyed reading about the design process as much as I enjoyed making the piece. So if this design doesn't inspire you to run over to Art Beads and nab up some of those modular crystals I don't know what will! ;)

Much love,

Genea