Listing EXTRAVAGANZA- Vortex Flowers and S-Clasps

Hello friends!

Ok maybe it wasn't a listing extravaganza, but it felt like one. I ended up getting my butt in gear and listing some new S-Clasps since there was a mention about them in our Bead Babes group on Facebook. They had been sitting here waiting to be listed so I got those done real quick like. I had originally planned to list more Vortex Flowers, but got a few up before I tuckered out ;) So here is what is new in the shop....

"Red Rainbow"- Schmedium clasp So again, red doesn't happen often in my world so if you see it, you may want to grab it cause I have no idea when I will feel up to making red again.

Recycled Bottle Glass "Olive" Schmedium s-clasp This one doesn't have a ball at the end of the swirl like the others incase you were wondering what the difference was ;)

Recycled Bottle Glass "Olive" Schmedium s-clasp and Small S-clasp. Same style just different sizes. I would love to make more of these in my other recycled bottle glass colors. So eventually....

"Red Rainbow Tiger" Schmedium S-Clasp and Medium S-Clasp. So again, red doesn't happen often in my world so if you see it, you may want to grab it cause I have no idea when I will feel up to making red again.

Vortex Flower "Bright Earth". Just like in my new necklace! :D

"Bright Earth" Wing Dings- I had one set up for grabs for now. I had hoarded it for my necklace design, but since I made the bubble buttons I can part with this one ;) I will make more eventually....

Vortex Flower "Lagoon"- My dreamy lime, aqua and teal color palette. So refreshing! 

That's all for today's update.

Have a wonderful hump day!

xo Genea

Genea Beads and The Art Bead Love Tour-GIVEAWAY

Hello friends!

Wow, I am still in shock that I won the giveaway to receive this magical necklace full of arty bead goodness!  So let me start out by telling you that we will be having 3 GIVEAWAYS on my blog. 

FOLLOW THE RULES AS POSTED FOR YOUR CHANCES TO WIN THE GIVEAWAY. 3 WINNERS WILL BE PICKED. 2 WILL RECEIVE ONE OF THE SELECTED LOTS OF BEADS BELOW AND THE OTHER WILL RECEIVE THE ART BEAD LOVE CHAIN. WINNERS WILL ALL BE RANDOMLY CHOSEN. BE SURE TO POST EACH TIME SEPARATELY FOR EACH PLACE YOU SHARE.  WINNERS AGREE TO PAY POSTAGE ON THEIR PACKAGE($2 for bead lot winners and $6 for the Art Bead Love Chain).

Here is a pic of the Art Beads Love Chain as I received it. 

Here are the beads I chose on the left and the beads I am adding to the chain on the right. The art beads I chose were: Frog bead- Green Girl Studios

  Blue stamped stars- Indian Creek Studios

 Bronze sea urchin charm- S L Artisan Accents

 Pink heart charms, butterfly, sunburst pendant and earring pair-Summers Studio, lotus charm, stamped flower petal pendant and matching earrings- Chinook Designs

Flower etched brass pendant- Patricia Gasparino 

 Ceramic tear drops- Elaine Ray

 Om brass pendant- Mary Jane Dodd

 Enameled eye charms- Barbara Lewis

Starburst metal pendant? I am not sure who created this lovely piece, but I did see that it was tied to a ribbon in Alice's post here. 

Is it crazy that I was just as excited to add my beads as I was to remove some from the chain?! I wanted to add a nice collection of my beads so I added more than what I removed. Those that know me well know how much of a gifter I am so I couldn't help it! I even had a little extra fun by adding my pieces "artfully". I used enameled chain and rubber o's from My ELEMENTS, and some black chain from Vintaj. 

I have also included a special gift bead to the next winner! I was told by one of the original creators of the chain that one thing that they did in the beginning was to have the winner send along one special bead just for the next winner. I decided to pick that tradition back up. So the next lucky winner of the Art Beads Love Chain will receive one of my beads too! Hooray! 

WHAT YOU WILL WIN IN THE GIVEAWAY...

Remember this giveaway will have 3 winners. Two winners will receive one of the sets of beads below and one lucky winner will receive the Art Beads Love Chain! 

Did I mention that I will even be adding some wing dings in the special collaboration colors?!

Bead Lot #1- Raku Leaf-Jessi, gold leaf lampwork ?, brown speckled clay-Kelli Pope, copper textured charm- Moobie Grace Designs turquoise glazed bead-Keith O'Connor, Wing dings- Genea Beads.

Bead Lot #2 Wing Dings- Genea Beads, purple dragonfly-Bead Freaky, purple flower bead- Moobie Grace designs, textured clay bead-Mary Ann Carroll, stamped star pendant-Suburban Girl Studios, enameled butterfly- Gardanne Glass

CONTEST WILL CLOSE NOVEMBER 15TH 12AM.

The Art Bead Love Tour is an ongoing project to spread the love of handmade to new and exciting places.  It's a way to reach people who may have never stumbled upon your blog on their own, and give them a chance to share the love of handmade.  A chain was chosen to link beads as a symbol of how this project links us all together ~ in our unity to stand behind handmade. 

The winner of the chain will be allowed to take up to 30 beads from this chain. They will then replace each bead they took with another handmade bead, charm or pendant of equal Quality.

(SO  Remember-----You're NOT winning the ENTIRE CHAIN---Just a chance to take some beads from it.)

PLEASE READ THE INSTRUCTIONS BELOW

I know there's a lot to read, but it's really important!!!

It is so important that the quality of the beads be maintained, so we can keep the Art Bead Love Tour alive.  We want to share consistent quality with the next winner.  If you make your own handmade beads or components, it's a great way to get your beads into the world for people to try them out, or, if you hoard collect art beads it's a great way to share your collection and get some new additions as well.

(Art Beads should be handmade by an artist, and not mass produced, such as Hill Tribe Silver beads or others like them.)

Remember, the focus is on creating handmade with handmade and beads/components taken should be replaced with beads/components that are made by an indivdual artist not an organization.

Here's where the chain has been:

Love My Art Jewelry

Lorelei's Blog

Shaiha's Ramblings

Jen Judd Rocks

Silver Rose Designs

My Life Under The Bus

Ex Post Facto Jewelry

Beading Mommy

Alice Dreaming

Pretty Things

Moobie Grace Designs

Suburban Girl Studio 

ferrarioriginalbeads 

Baublicious 

Devine Designs Jewelry

Chinook Jewelry Designs   

Genea Beads         

Here's how it works:

(Please read the entire post before entering.)

1. The winner of the chain will be allowed to take up to 30 beads from this chain.  They will then replace each bead they took with another handmade bead, charm or pendant of equal quality.

2. The winner will post pictures of what was taken and what was added, in order to keep an account of the chain's progress and to keep our followers drooling.  Please be sure to give credit to the bead artists as well (if you know them). 

3. The winner will then have a giveaway, just like this one,to keep passing the chain on and on.  Rules can be copied and pasted from here.

4. When you repost your giveaway (remember you can copy and paste from here)-a list should be added to show where the chain has gone, with links to each previous blog.Ultimately, this will end up a very long list!

5. Chain must be shipped to its new home via Priority Small Flat Rate box with delivery confirmation. Please package it carefully.

6. There will be a button on the Love My Art Jewelry website that links to the current blog and giveaway-so if you have the chain, it will link to your blog, that way our followers can have another chance to win it.

7. You MUST exchange your beads and have your giveaway completed within two weeks of receiving the chain.

(Please, please, please, if you can not adhere to the above rules, do not enter the giveaway at this time.  It will go on and on and you can always enter at a later date.) There will be a button on the side bar of our blog so that you can track where the chain currently is.

Here's How to Enter:

1. You must have an active blog to enter.

2.  Leave a comment below (make sure your email is linked to your blog or leave it in the comment.  Entries without emails will not qualify)

3. Share on Facebook, Twitter or your blog for extra chances to win. Leave a comment for each way you share, with a link if possible.

4. Winner will pay shipping and will be billed through Paypal-small priority flat rate box with delivery confirmation, $6.00.

5. Open only to our readers in the United States-due to problems with tracking and shipping overseas (sorry).


Best of luck to you all!

xo Genea

HOT, HOT, HEAT and NEW Glass Headpins designs- MAKU Studio and Starry Road Studio

Hello friends!

Yeah, it is a band actually(post title), but this time I am talking about the weather. To say it has been hot is an understatement. You know it's bad when you see church signs like this! LOL. One of our local churches had the same message, but I just copied this one since I didn't get a chance to snap a pic here. 

So due to the weather production was SLOW this week. The one "break" we had in the weather after a storm made the temp drop, but the humidity PEAK. I think humidity is worse than super hot temps honestly. So I opened the window thinking I was going to get a good lampworking day in only to cut it short. 

I did, however, create some GORGEOUS NEW glass headpins. I didn't end up having time to list them this week, but you can expect to see them this coming week!

So how did these new designs come about? Well I had the extreme pleasure of doing a trade with Marianne Kasparian of  MAKU Stuido! Marianne asked me if I could make some headpin pairs for her to use in her work. Below is some of Marianne's incredible clay masterpieces.

Here are some of her AMAZING hearts! I just LOVE the ones with the nails!

This one even has a little heart window cut out! So awesome! You know how I love negative space and look at that COLOR! Wow!

Tiny ones for earrings???! OMG!

You might also recognize Marianne's work by her fabulously funky little birds. Look! This guy is even in my favorite colors! ;)

Maybe you recognize her work by her incredible ammonites. Aren't the just outstanding??!

So with her styles and colors in mind, I got to work creating matches. How often do we get to do this as artists(get to "copy" a style in your medium to match)??! As you may know that answer is, not often. So I put on my designing cap and dug into my glass. I picked out colors, silver leaf, fine silver wire, reactive and heat color changing glasses(raku) to make complimentary headpins.

I remembered seeing this gorgeous heart with that rim of bright lime green. I immediately thought of one of my odd lot glasses!

Here is a close-up of the bright green color along with the gorgeous rainbows in Raku.

I also wanted to create some headpins to match these raku fired beads that have an ivory hue to them with a band of silver around the core. 

Of course, I had to try some ammonites as well...

Here are the results!  From the top middle clockwise: Ammonite shell accents with Raku bottoms, raku bubble button dots with bands of sis and raku bottoms, black with a band of sis and fine silver dots, BRIGHT electric lime droplets with raku and stone bottoms etched, black with raku and stone bottoms etched, black raku stone bottoms etched with shiny bubble buttons, black with sis spirals etched and bubble buttons, black with sis bottom dot and shiny raku hearts, and raku spiral electric lime pods!

Here is the back view.

 WOW! Can you believe this fantastic collection of matching headpins?! I was SO EXCITED by the results!

Here is a close-up of all of that amazing "webbed" Raku COLOR! OMG! It's sooooo pretty!!

My good friend Karen had nudged me to see if I was going to make some more.  She had also asked me about a special design for an idea she had.

Here are the headpins I made for Karen. Some are similar to the ones above except for the 2 sets on the far left. The ones closest to the raku and electric lime pods are black with "curdled" sis dots and roundish. 

The other pair was this idea I had wanted to create especially for Karen. As you may know, her business name is "Starry Road Studio". 

Here is a close-up of the design.  I call these "Galaxy" Headpins.

There is black at the top scattered with far away stars and then some dots of silver for more visible stars. There is a band of "asteroids" next and then a rainbow "nebula" at the bottom! Aren't they just INCREDIBLE?! I just adore them! 

So this is what you can expect to see in the shop coming up this week!

See ya soon!

xo Genea