Local Show Announcement and NEW glass beads and glass headpins!

Hello beautiful souls,

I am excited to announce that we will be doing a local bead show at "the friendliest little bead shop," Bead Boutique in Kansas City, Missouri. If you all remember I spent many years working for Bead Boutique under the original and new owners. I am SUPER EXCITED to make a guest appearance since not seeing my bead family since about 2006! I will be doing a show November 17-19th, and then again on December 2nd(friends and family evening showcase), and December 3rd!

I have been making beads like crazy the last 2 days, and have many more days in the studio up until the show cranking out as much awesome new work as I can before then. I did a facebook live to show off the new work here. I feel super weird being recorded, but at least you can see all the angles of the beads like you were here with me in my studio :)

The spiny heart I will leave as is and take it with me to the show. The other two I am sending to a friend for a special collaboration. More details on that later :D

 I had the idea to make a hamsa hand and did a few designs. The one on the left was the first, middle second, and far right 3rd. Sadly, the middle finger of the center bead cooled too slowly and the glass cracked :/ The eye bead will be going for the collab as well. I can't wait to make more of them. 

 Who doesn't love glass headpins? Yep, I know... so I made lots. They can make tiny little pendants, dangles, or earrings. 

Oooo so pretty!! I got some gorgeous color in these Om headpins.

Christian and I went to First Friday so I will be posting photos and a blog about that soon. It was freezing outside. I took a few photos of Christian and me while we were there. Here is one of them :D

Boys, all 4 of the photos I took he's making faces. Lol. Oh well, I look good in the photos, right?! ;)

I will be back soon. Lots of beads to make.

Love, light, and creativity,

xoxo Genea

Find me on the web:

www.geneabeads.com, www.geneabeads.blogspot.com, www.facebook.com/geneabeadslampwork, www.instagram.com/thirdeyegypsys.

Double Helix Zephyr - Quick glass testing.

Hello friends!

It's been awhile since I posted a blog about my findings. I am always on the hunt for the "perfect clear". One that melts well, is free from scratches on the rods, bubbles, one that is compatible with the glass I use, one that only needs a quick wipe in windex or alcohol to be cleaned. I am excited to say I've found it! I added a few new clears to my last glass order and Double Helix Zephyr was one of them. I had wanted to try their clear for awhile and decided this was the time. Now what I am posting is only Zephyr. These are just my very quick glass tests to see how the glass "behaves" with things I like to use in my work.

Here are the quick tests- (from left to right) Raku encased with Zephyr, yellow filigrana encased with Zephyr, Rainbow dichroic encased with Zephyr, and Zephyr.

All of these tests were done to see if there was any incompatible cracking. As you can see it passed with all of the glasses! This means that I can safely layer these with Zephyr in my work without worrying if I will run into any troubles. The last thing you want to do is make a gorgeous focal bead only to have cracks appear after your annealed bead comes out of the kiln! 

The last bead is just Zephyr by itself. You may not be able to tell, but the glass is AMAZINGLY OPTICALLY CLEAR. No bubbles, no scratches, no anything... AMAZING! It's crystal clear! The glass has the perfect melting consistency. It's not too stiff, but not mushy soft either. 

This next test was to see how Zephyr reacts with silver leaf. On the left you can see what silver does on the surface of the glass. It is a bit shimmery with some gold looking tones. On the right the silver leaf has been gently heated as it was encased. Some clears will make silver leaf look gold when encased. Zephyr leaves silver leaf looking silver when encased.

This last test was to see if Zephyr could be used as a clear core for problematic glass, and to test how it reacts with baking soda. I have learned that yellow, coral and some orange glass tend to cooler faster than other colors. I was having some HORRIBLE cracking issues with some XL focal beads. I bought up this problem in the International Society of Glass Bead makers group on Facebook. They were kind enough to give me the tip of using a clear core as a base for these types of colors to avoid the cracking. So as you can see I have pressed the Sunburst Coral bead super thin and no cracks have appeared! 

Breakage- Sunburst Coral with no clear core.

The last test was to see how Zephyr reacted with baking soda as you all know I am totally diggin on my stone textured beads. It's a bit hard to tell from the photo, but the glass has a layer of white on it with very little pitting.So for the baking soda test I know that this will not be a clear I will use for the stone textured beads. This really isn't an issue since there are plenty of other clears that pit very nicely for stone beads. 

This test also tells me that whatever is in the formula for Zephyr keeps the glass protected from things that would want to destroy it's clarity. 

So what is my review? BUY IT! It's AMAZING! It's worth every penny you spend on it! 

Below you can see some of the clear in action.

 Beads with Double Helix Zephyr.

 Beads with Double Helix Zephyr.

I hope you found these tests to be helpful and that if you were thinking about trying Zephyr that this would give you that extra push to add it to your order.

Thanks so much for stopping by.

xo Genea

Beachy Textured Beads Listed!

Hello friends!

Did you enjoy my teaser of these incredible beads yesterday? Well they are in the shop today! Most of them anyways ;) If I didn't list one you were lusting over in the photo, just let me know and I will get it in the shop for ya( the spacers are already gone and the headpin designs aren't finished for a set yet).

 

Here's the  collection of beads if you happened to miss it yesterday ;) 

Tide Pool "Atlantis" - Now Barbara won't be the only person with one of these incredible focals! ;) I don't think I could click enough photos to capture all of the magic in this amazing beachy focal!

 

Here is a size photo for the "Beach Eggs" so you can tell what large and small looks like ;)

 

Beach Egg "Crystal Pool Wave"- All I can say is WOW! Canyou believe this killer combo? I just love the contrast and the glitter, and.... well everything!

 

Beach Egg "Rainforest Wave"- Again with that wonderful caramel brown and gorgeous green teal!

 

Beach Egg "Atlantis Wave"- A tiny treasure with all the magic of the sand and surf!

 

Beach Egg "White Coral Tide"- This lovely one got some fantastic texture! It reminds me of that wonderful white coral you see :)

 

Tide Pool Pebble "Atlantis"- Who doesn't love lentils, right?! I just love everything about this particular design! The shape, the texture, the spiral and starfish! *swoon*

I hope you enjoyed my little beach adventure as much as I did!

See you soon!

xo Genea

Trip to the BEACH- Baking Soda beads

Hello friends!

Ok well it's sort of a trip to the beach... from my studio table, that is! If you can't get to the beach, why not bring it to you? If you remember awhile back I made that super sweet "Tide Pool" focal for Barbara Bechtel for our swap. 

 

Here is Barbara's focal if you don't remember. 

So why the heck didn't you see any in the shop? Well just as inspiration comes it generally comes to me when I don't have all of the supplies to do it(FIGURES!). I got my glass order and got back on a roll making these "Tide Pool" focals. I gave one to Barbara, and one to Mom only leaving me with one.  So I just got back in the beachy groove again after seeing a treasure in which I was featured.  If you remember my last  blog post talking about inspiration you can see where the idea started.

So after making a few of these I had this idea for a bead on my walk back to the house. LUCKY ME, it actually worked out just as amazing as it looked in my head! So what happens when ideas work out? More ideas keep coming and you have to keep creating until no ideas remain or you make so many that you have fizzled out.

 

If you were on my facebook you might have seen some mobile uploads of my beads as they came out of the kiln. I was out snapping some photos for my listings tomorrow in the sun so I thought I would take some detailed shots. 

Here you can see the entire collection of beads I created. I will have a few up in the shop tomorrow for the listings, but I won't get all of them in the shop in one day.  

 

Here is a close-up of the focals. I just love that coral like texture the beads have. They are like little treasures found while combing the beach :)

 

Here are some glass headpins I made. I was super pleased with the results, but unfortunately it seems like there are many variables to getting the desired texture results I like best. See all of the more brown sandy bottomed pins? It took me that many just to try to get 2 the same texture :/ 

I think many things change how the baking soda works like: over heating, moisture in the air(ie humidity), fresh baking soda for every try, heating and cooling inbetween applications etc. 

 

Here are the spacers I tried. I really love the results of them. They are like beach glass and sand all mixed into one. I really would love to go back and make more of these, but would you believe I am OUT OF GLASS again?! Well of some of the colors I just used like Teal and Dark Ivory. I guess next time I order, I will just have to order pounds!

Well I just wanted to do a quick post about my latest fixation. I need to get some photos edited and work on my BSBP blog ;)

See you soon!

xo Genea