M.I.A.- Inspired by everything

Hello friends!

Yep, I've been missing in action again. It's been hard getting into a rhythm since I got home for sure. You don't realize how much your partner does until you aren't around them. I am the dog care giver, chef, artist, house cleaner, grocery buyer, going to train at the gym myself goer, and the list goes on. It sure does get tired doing EVERYTHING!  So I thought you might like to see what I've been up to. I clicked some pics of my artsy ramblings.

 

So you know as artists we are inspired by things we see, right? Well a little while back I was featured in this treasury. Here was the treasury list. Here is the link to it "lampwork headpins".

So when I first began lampworking there was a technique that people were doing where they rolled their beads in baking soda to give them a stone like look. Here is a really pretty example bead of that effect done by Lavender Creek.

 

So as you can see from the above photo the glass headpins with their stony look reminded me of this style so randomly on my walk home from the grocery store I had the idea for these beads below.

Sweet huh?! I did just a few beads to try out the technique as I only tried it once and bombed hard while first making beads. I used a transparent glass on my hot head and kept having the bubbles surface everywhere. Obviously I am much more skilled now after almost 8 years of lampworking. I realized that through this technique it also gives lampwork beads the look of sand cast African Krobo beads.

These beads are made by grinding up glass bottles. You take the glass and put it into molds and fire it in a clay kiln. Here is a wonderful link on Ebay that shows the steps involved in making these beads along with a listing . The photo above is from one of my fav African trade bead shops on Etsy, Soul of Somanya.

 

I was also inspired to create these charms using paint chips. I don't know if you've seen a bagillion things made with paint chips on Pintrest.  I was also looking at other things on Pintrest with mom that were these paintings done with water colors and white out pens. I don't know the exact artist for them, but somehow the idea seeped into my head to put both together. I whipped together these funky earrings made out of paint chips and white out pen. He he. I think I could definitely refine this idea, but meh I move onto things so quickly ;)

While my friend Holly was in town visiting Portland, we hit up a knitting shop called Twisted. In their shop they had finger print jewelry. It's hard to tell that this is a print to me, but they just had some simple pmc clay prints done on display. After being in KC with mom and being on Pintrest I saw more. I guess that idea seeped into my head as well.

 

So my idea was a little different. Since it was before valentines day I had the idea to make finger print hearts with my index finger print and the index finger print of my family members :D On the left you can see my dads and my print, and on the right you see my moms and my print. Unfortunately after shrinking it down you can't really see the print texture with the colored ink. If you click on the larger image of the photo you can see it better. I got a black ink pad to see if that works better since the contrast would be higher maybe it will work. *shrug*

 

You may have seen this pic of my mom's painting she made for me for Christmas on facebook. I have been posting pics on there lots with my phone. It's just so darn easy so I do it often!  So anyways here is a quick shot of it. This painting is just above my computer screen so I look at it often. So as I said above I am always inspired by things I see. I tried to make mom's painting into a heart design, but failed miserably. I had wanted to make her one for Valentines day. 

 

I didn't get discouraged though. I went back again and decided maybe a lentil design of her painting would translate better. So here is the bead! Wow it sure is hard to make such an intricate 2D image into a 3D bead! I mean I'm sure I could go back and try some more things with opaques and stringers, but I really love the rich colors of transparents so I tried this first. Some of the opaque glasses have chemical reactions with colors, so if I did this design in opaques it would end up pretty different, that and our opaques aren't as vivid in glass as the paints. The eggplant color especially.

 

So since the heart idea didn't turn out I just made it into a pendant for mom so she could wear it. You can do this same pendant design if you follow my tutorial on my left side bar of my blog <<<<<<.

I had the extreme pleasure of going to my friend Sam's studio. Sam is actually a woman and Sam isn't really her name. She has a really pretty name, but goes by Sam. Not sure why, but anyways ;) Mom and I got to visit her magical studio on Friday. Wow did she have just about everything you would need to create just about anything! Unfortunately I couldn't convince Sam to let me photograph her studio or her work, but I will try again next time I visit. It's such a magical place and she doesn't get online or sell her work anywhere so you can image how special it is to get an invite into her studio to play!

 

Here is what I created with some Thompson enamels and these vintage oxides.  I got a crash course in enameling on copper. Sam gave me this pre-treated white oval to play with. I dusted on some thompson enamels on the base and painted on top of it with the Oxides. It got muddy in a few places, but I had NO idea what I was doing and it was pretty fun! ;)

 

Here is a close-up of the Oxides I used. Sam got this killer deal on this whole tool thingy full of these amazing vials!She gave me the entire stash you see in the box above! :D

I also figured out some cool things to do with my empty eoilette containers. Eoilettes are the little colored rivet thingies you use in scrap booking. I use them for the hole in my bead tags. I just got some new frit refills and the samples fit perfectly in these containers! I even removed the sticker from the bag and it first perfectly on the top of the container! Sweet huh? Yay for re-using!

 

Incase you were curious. I got the frit from Val Cox. You can buy her Raku frit here. 

Well if you made it to the bottom without dying you did pretty well! Lol that's what happens with I don't blog in forever! 

Well thanks for stopping by! See you soon!

xo Genea