Suburban Girl Studios- Bead Design Team!

Hello friends!

Do you know Diana of Suburban Girl Studios? Well if you don't she is pretty kick ass, and so is her work! So I am writing to tell you that she is creating a design team! Want to participate? Visit her blog to find out how!

Good luck!

xo Genea

Valentine's Day- The last minute shop update.

Hello friends!

Well I am behind. Surprise... With moving and everything I really didn't get to make the amount of hearts I wanted to have in the shop for Valentine's Day :( Bummer! I did manage to squeak out a few and some hearty headpins as well, so I guess they will have to do, right?!

 

You remember the Bead Soup I made for Heather, right? Well her color scheme bled into this next heart design ;)

"Tropical Crush" Lots of super BRIGHT colors for this drab time of year.

 

"Desert Serpent Love's Flight" You might remember the super amazing heart I made for Staci for our bead swap? Well if you don't it was pretty similar to this little beauty right here.

 

"Eye love hugs and kisses" Who would I be if I didn't so something with eyes, right?! Well I did just that for this design! Now normally I like to do my eyes with blue or green cause well I have brown and they just really aren't that exciting to me(always want what we don't have ;), but I thought brown might really compliment the red so there ya go!

 

"Rainbow heart streamers" Ok so I must admit. These have been made for awhile, but one of the original ones was kinda small for the set. I had to wait for my glass order to add the last one and I sure am glad I did. The lime cane glass is much brighter than the last batch I had :D

Well  I hope you have a happy hearty day with your sweet heart and if you don't have a sweet heart, you can always cuddle up to your beads like I will be doing this Valentine's day ;P

xo Genea

Soup Received!

Hello friends!

I bet you are super excited to see what I received from my BSBP partner, Heather Powers!

My dad handed me my package that came in the mail from Heather. I snatched it out of his hands and proceeded to tear into the package. I realized I should snap some pictures as I excitedly tore through the package so I grabbed my camera and snapped and layed things out in the island in my parents kitchen.

 

As you may know I am a sucker for details. I loved the cuttle little doodle Heather drew on the outside of my envelope :)

 

Inside the package were these lovely little brown paper bags tied with lovely ribbons and a card.

 

Awww how sweet! A lovely handmade card celebrating Heather's home town <3 The card is by Lief Design.

Inside the card Heather's note revealed that in the contents of the gray ribbon package was my "stretching my color palette" challenge in muted and pastel color scheme.

 

Here is a shot of those cute little paper bags. Remember, I'm a sucker for details and cute organizational packaging. I was at Michael's the other day and found these lovely little bags for sale! I was tempted to pick some up, but decided to pass them by. I believe it was a set of 25 bags for like $2-3 bucks(if you decide you need some!) ;)

 

These were the treasures I found in the first little brown bag! WOW! They are even more amazing in person(which is usually the case since pictures can never truly capture art works awesomeness!)  Just look at all of the lovely little details in the beads! The top rounds and barrel bead are made with canes and the flower pendant looks like it was maybe pressed, carved, sanded and painted! So awesome! I'm just so impressed with Heather's unique and amazing style!

 

Upon opening the next 2 little brown bags I found these other treasures! A very beautiful heart bead with a bird sitting on a nest with an egg, a feather, bird and speckled egg in the top right corner. In the bottom left corner a wonderful selection of smoky quartz rounds, lucite flowers, pressed Czech glass rondelles and leaves and a gorgeous sunflower clasp by Green Girl Studios! I think the heart shaped pendant with the bird in the next is my favorite from this set. The details are just incredible and it's so teeny so I am, again, so impressed with Heather's artistic skill! She must have an incredibly steady hand to detail such a wonderful little work of art. The painting on the bead is just lovely too with a wonderful watercolor looking effect for the sky that is a soft blue and green and the bird and nest being a light to darker brown!

 

Here is a wonderful detail shot I stole from Heather's Etsy shop. This is very similar to my pendant. You can find this beauty in her shop here Meadowlark Pendant Midnight Song .

 

Inside my teal ribbon tied bags were these amazing beads! I don't know if you can really tell from the photo, but the beads are a wonderful deep blue turquoise and a very vibrant magenta with some touches of brown! They are SOOOOO pretty! Heather is just so stinkin' talented! 

 

Here are the other beads that were inside the teal ribbon set. Some gorgeous matching pressed Czech glass beads (and acrylic beads from Vintage Meadow Artwork by Heather French) and a beautiful button clasp by Mamacita Beadworks. Heather really has a wonderful eye for color as you can see by her pieces and the complimentary extra beads! 

I decided to dive into my challenge pastel/muted mix first! I have them happily sitting on my bead mat waiting to be made into something.

HEATHER'S SOUP FROM ME...

Ok so you saw the teaser photo of Heather's bead, but how about we put it into focus?

 

Here is the mixture of beads I sent with Heather's soup. I knew this was WAY outside of her normal colors so I tried to send a lot of little things for her to use in her design since she probably didn't have many of these colors in her bead box. From top left to right: Large lucite hoops and handmade painted plexi glass by Yvonne Irvin-Faus of My ELEMENTS, a mixture of some very colorful fun shaped pressed Czech glass beads from my many bead shop travels(daggers, spades, drops, faceted rounds, and rondelles), a mixture of many sizes of aluminum jump rings, and a wonderful mix of: pixies, 8's, rubber o's and lucite hoops from My ELEMENTS.

 

I sent some of my favs to Heather for her design! You know me and my "little bits," I had to send: a bead-inside-a-bead-hollow focal, a flower heart button, some swirly spacers, wing dings and some spiral pod glass headpins! My girls from our Bead Babe's group on Facebook told me I should really give Heather a challenge and send her beads in my bright colors palette. Apparently the new HOT Pantone color for this year is Tangerine Tango, which looks like a bright orangey coral to me(luckily I have boat loads of an odd lot in just the perfect hue!).

 

Here is a close-up of her bead-inside-a-bead-hollow :)

 

Here is one last shot of the full soup serving!

If you are looking for beads like these I am sad to say that after my moving sale I am pretty wiped out. Don't worry though! My studio is back up and I will begin re-stocking my goodies soon!

Thanks so much for stopping by to  check out our soups! I hope you have fun designing with yours!

See you soon!

xo Genea

Meet Heather Powers, my BSBP Winter 2012 Partner!

Hello friends!

I would like to introduce you to my Bead Soup Blog Partner,  Heather Powers. You may know her from a number of wonderful places as she is a huge force in the bead world. You may recognize her from her shop Humble Beads or perhaps from The Art Bead Scene Blog. You can read more about Heather and what inspires her in her bio.

Here are some of her works you may recognize as well! I just picked a few from her www.humblebeads.com site to share with you here :)

 

Here are some beads from her "Art Inspired" section. I just love all of the colors and lines in this set.

 

She even does cute little woodland creatures like her "baby hedgies" . I am particularly in love with these just because I used to own a couple of hedge hogs. They really are such remarkable little creatures!

 

and I am totally blown away by this style bead she does called "Wishes and Starfishes". I am totally amazed by the techniques being done with polymer clay these days. When I was into polymer clay at age 15 it was all about cane work pieces. I really love the wonderful painterly style of these beads. They are like tiny little 3 dimensional canvas'. They have wonderful raised textures along with hand painted on colors. Wow! 

I was so excited to get picked to be partners with Heather. She is so creative and I just admire her incredible skill in clay! I can't wait to see which of her treasures she sends to me in my soup!

Here is a little teaser image of the soup that is in the mail on it's way to her as we speak!

 

See you soon!

xo Genea

NEWS and a SALE!

Hello friends!

Well I finally have some news for you. I've been lying low for awhile so you haven't read all of the things going on in my life at the moment. Who wants to read about all of that crap all the time anyways? :( So first off I will tell the news as I have just posted about it on Facebook.

I will be going back home to Kansas City for a few months due to some family things. I just need to be home with my mom.  I know that's pretty vague, but the full details aren't mine to share so that will have to suffice.  I will be staying with mom for a little while while Ricky stays in Portland. So I guess that is about as much as I can tell for now. 

 

Ok so we aren't really going by wagon, but I couldn't help but add a pic of Oregon Trail into my blog for some comic relief.  We will actually be traveling by car. 

I will be taking myself and the dogs to KC so I need to drive back since it's too cold to fly all of us and probably just about as expensive. We are leaving on the 28th of this month! I am thankfully traveling with my friend, Holly from Kansas City! I am looking forward to our girl cross country road trip. I'm hoping not to hit some bad weather as we pass over the mountains. KC really hasn't gotten hammered with crazy wintery weather yet much this year so I am hoping it will hold off until I make it home safely.

THE SALE...

So where is the sale info on this thing?! Ok well here we go. Traveling costs have SKY ROCKETED so to help with traveling costs I am having a sale! Who doesn't love a sale?! So from now through Tuesday at midnight I am offering 30% OFF STORE WIDE with the coupon code "TRAVELKC". Enter this code at check out for the discount to be applied!

Thanks for checking up on me! See you soon!

xo Genea

 

More Jewels from the desert- Shop Update

Hello friends!

I suppose you are wondering why there hasn't been more content on my blog recently other than shop updates. Well the reality isn't so amazing so I've been keeping it off of here. I do have some news I will be sharing early next week, but until then I will just get to my shop updates. They really are the bright spot in my day :)

So a few more goodies in the Desert/Midnight theme and a little twist...

"Desert Serpent" these are back in the shop! I just LOVE this style I created. So natural with a burst of rainbowy goodness.  I would have liked to have made more especially some in a focal size, but I ran out of IVORY. Wa, wa, wa...

 

"Onyx Rainbow Sands" a little sampling of everything awesome in the way of this deserty theme. 

 

"Painted Desert Pods" maybe you remember seeing a few of these that I sent to Staci of Artisan Accents for our swap. Well now how about some for EVERYONE?! :D

 

Tornado Candy Ruffle Button "Midnight Jewel"- so you remember that new focal kick I got on? How about these colors?! I originally made this to match these mash up sets and the headpins(they sold, but I'll be making more ;)
 

Desert Serpent "Just Rust"- so you all know how I LOVE red roof tile, right? Well I figured I would give this style I came up with a try on it. WOW! Aren't these awesome? So why aren't there more matching beads to go with these?(I ran out of this color too! More on the way though ;)

I even named these beads after a Fiona Apple song .

Well that concludes my update for now. We actually had a snow day here in Portland the other day. Ricky and I ventured out and took some photos. I will get those edited and up here in a few days :D

See ya soon!

xo Genea

Metamorphosis of Design "Tornado Candies" and Shop Update!

Hello friends!

Do you remember me talking about these beads? I kinda got off on a tangent after creating them and created my first FREE tutorials(on my left side blog bar) with one of the focal beads. I got all of these babies photographed inbetween passing clouds the other day. Just got them all edited and up in the shop today. 

So before moving along to the listings I want to talk with you about the designs. You know how I am about the process :D So I guess I just kinda kept going with the lime greens, teals and aquas. I did that run of Vortex Flowers and it was just easy to keep working in the same colors.

I decided to SUPER SIZE my "Tornado Candy" design. This came about when I did my trade with Staci Klinger Smith from Staci Louise Originals. When we did our trade she had asked if I did the "Desert Serpent" style beads in a focal size. Hmmm.. no I didn't, but sure could! I was really pleased with the results so I decided to do the same with the "Tornado Candy" style.

As I create I kinda get side tracked sometimes. I keep getting ideas like "Hey, what if I did that? or What if I add this"? So that is EXACTLY what I did!

 

Here are the focals. They are kind of in the order they were created except the transparent daisy topped one was the last one.  So the large Tornado Candy was first, then how about a ruffle? OOoo pretty! How about a ruffle and a bubble button? SWEET! How about a daisy?! Maybe opaque and transparent?  Hmmm... kinda cool, but the transparent rakes on top(which you cant see) didn't quite turn out right. Ummmmm FRIT, YES FRIT. Oooo schweet! It kinda looks like tye-dye! Oh, what if I did ALL transparent?? SUH-WHEET! It's so SHINY!

So there they were. I had them sitting on my bead table when I made that tutorial for Holly so I just scooped up one of them and made the finished piece.

So inbetween there, I just made a TON of these little "Dizzy Daisy Discs". They work up pretty fast and they are so pretty. Instead of creasing them all the way down to the bead hole, they are only creased through the outer transparent layer leaving a spiral disc in tact for the middle.

 

Well you know me, I just can't leave things simple, so I had to make some "Tornado Pods" too. Especially after making the swirl pods. I used transparents this time. They are really pretty except you can see the whole headpin wire through them. You can't really tell that I used the yellow green and pale aqua inside 2 of them since they are SO pale, but they are there!

 

Pretty sweet eh?! So I suppose you want some links huh? ;)

NEW IN THE SHOP....

 

"Dizzy Daisy Discs"

 

Tornado Candy Ruffle Button "Green Hairstreak"

 

Tornado Candy Ruffle Daisy "Liquid Daisy"

 

Tornado Candy Ruffle Daisy "Tye-Dye"

 

Tornado Candy "Aqua Whirl"

 

Tornado Pods "Patina" glass headpins

I hope you enjoyed reading about the story behind these beads.

Have a fantastic rest of the week!

xo Genea