Making a "Color Profile" for a glass design and inspiration

Hello friends!

I'm excited to share some of my design process with you. While I was visiting one of our local bead shops Beads at Dusti Creek, I was gathering a few strands of hand-dyed fairy silk to finish my "Coffee Lover's Cup" design . I also grabbed an extra strand of silk to work on a new "Vortex Flower" necklace. What does this have to do with designing? Well I bought the silk cording first before creating the "Vortex Flower" bead. In my head I knew the new colors of Bullseye glass I bought would be just perfect!

So let's start with the colors. Hmmm... ok I see: olive, a warmish orangey brown, a raspberry pink.

 

So being a long time lampwoker, I learned a few things along the way. This happens when you make an entire set out of beads only to find out when they cool that 2 of the colors you used are so close that your design is totally botched!

So first I took my silk and picked out colors of glass I thought matched. Next I wound each of those colors on the mandrel to see the colors together. I was pleased with my picks so I chose the order in which I would layer the glass and layed the rods out in order.

As you can see the way in which I layered the colors there is great balance in colors, transparency or opacity and glitter and streaky.

BUT... that "Vortex Flower" pictured above was NOT the finished bead.

 

This was the first one! The shape was REALLY beautiful too! Perfectly color layered and a wonderful gravity shaped wavy flower. So what went wrong? Well when you use gravity to shape your bead one end of the bead hole suffers and becomes pointy. When I went to "touch up" the end by adding more glass the base became too warm and the flower began to fall. It kissed the mandrel on the inside of the flower leaving bead release stuck to it :( I also spent too much time fixing the end and not enough time warming the rest of the bead. When I re-introduced the edge of the flower into the flame I heard the most HORRIBLE sound a lampworker will hear.  

A teeny tiny *tink* sound echoed from the inner windings of the glass. This my friends, is the sound of glass cracking from chilling. The fine tuned lampwork ears can hear this very quiet sound(imagine a pin dropping) and know exactly what it brings. Yes, DISASTER. 

So you know I was even more determined this time. I knew the colors were perfect and the layering was spot on. Now to re-make my beauty.

 

But why does my thumb hurt? Where did these strange cuts come from? I didn't use a razor tool. Hmm...

 

OH, it was YOU! The end of a rod of glass. You see I was pushing and winding the glass so hard and so involved in my piece I didn't realize that I was cutting my thumb with the sharp end of the glass rod! These cuts are NASTY. You know when you open a card board box or you feel that sharp paper? When you move the cut you can feel your flesh open? YES, it feels like that! OUCH! Thank God for newskin( that is the shiny stuff you see on my thumb in the photo above)!

So what you may not know about making the "Vortex Flowers" is that as you layer many, many layers the glass gets harder to wind because you need to work fast to keep the inner windings warm. So switching from the glass you are working to warming the other layers doesn't allow the glass to get as hot and flow as well as a smaller bead.

But anyways... Back to the color profile....

 

I also did a second "Color Profile" to match a GORGEOUS pendant I received from my very talented friend, Cindy Buehler . As you can see from the photo, it's a good thing I chose a few different whites. I chose a regular white and "French Vanilla". As you can see from the photo the clay white is a bit off whie and looks pretty sweet with the off white rubber o's as well. You can pick some of those over at Yvonne's shop! This is a great example of why it's a great idea to do a "Color Profile" before making a set of beads.

 

So I was a bit inspired by Cindy's pendant and wanted to see if I could translate it into glass. I wound this glass into a pretty sweet ring for myself ;) The outer rings of purple do have some lighter blushes to it more like the purple on Cindy's pendant.

In the 104 glass palette we have a lot of murky purples that turn silvery or are pretty gray. The hue of this pendant is a hard match. It's somewhat pastelish, but still somewhat vivid. Kind of like a bright lilac. Bullseye, Gold Purple was the closest match I could find and it matched my rubber o's :D 

I hope you enjoyed my blip on my "Color Profile" technique for designing in glass :)

COMING UP NEXT...

If you remember before I moved I was going to get a give-away going of one of Cindy's Amazing pendants!

 

I got side tracked with the move and getting a few other things together. I had wanted to add some of my lampwork beads and a few other beadies for the give-away before offering it. Now with that done I will be getting the give-away ready next week! Stay tuned for your chance to snag one of these AMAZING pendants and other goodies!

See you soon!

xo Genea

Soup sent to my Bead Soup Partner, Mary Harding

Hello friends!

Well today I hit the ground running. Does that ever happen to you? I feel like if I don't do my tasks every day the world leaves me behind! Yikes! So much to blog about! So how about the fun stuff??? :D Since Mary has already received her bead soup from me I can reveal some of the shots I took :) Wanna see what she got? Ok so if you checked out the flickr photo pool you will notice that I crammed these photos into 2 shots. Why? Well I am one of those people that doesn't have a paid account so I needed to save image space :(

 

Here is the whole collection. Sorry about the lighting. This is what happens when there is no sunlight for photos ;) As you can see I sent a lovely sampling of stuff and things :D I sent: some leather cord, nylon cord, Hilltribe silver findings and beads, some nifty rubber o's and eights(My ELEMENTS) , aluminum jump rings, and a SUPER set of my lampwork beads called "Carnival Peel". I named this set because the shapes remind me of a carnival and the colors remind me of fruit peels, that and it sounds hip and trendy together ;)

 

Here is a closer view of the lampwork beads. From left to right: glass headpins on copper wire, discs, spiraly and glittery spacers, wing dings, vortex flower, tri-flower trumpet, and a daisy button clasp.

 

Here was the start to her envelope. I snapped a pic when I just had her daisy and name drawn. Don't want to give away the addresses to our secret hide outs ;)

 

Here you can see the findings bit a little better. The colors are much more brilliant than they appear. Must be the plastic bags ;)

 

Here is a 4block of the tri-flower trumpet. I just LOVE this new style bead. I will blog about the inspiration for it's creation in another post, so stay tuned for that :D

 

Since I didn't have 4 shots of the Vortex Flower you get to see 3 separate pictures.  Here is the back side.

 

The front. Here you can see the glittery orange on the outside and the glittery yellow 4 colors from the outside. If I wouldn't have told you, you probably wouldn't have known. The orange color looks like shimmery gold fish scales and the yellow looks like glittery pineapple flesh. SO cool :D

Here's the side shot. Again you can really see the glitter on the outer edge! I'm so glad it showed up so well :)

Well thanks for stopping by to see Mary's goodies!

See you soon!

Much love,

Genea

Vortex's in the shop!

Hello friends!

I am excited to announce that I have listed some Vortex Flowers, some spacers and the Vortex Flower ring that some of you may have already seen on Facebook.

I am running into a few things bumping up against each other so please bear with me. I have so many things I want to do and I'm just trying to figure out the order in which they need to get done. I want to get the shop stocked up with things that will be in the magazines and Valentine's Day stuff. I was excited to get my artbeads.com order today! 

I have some super SWEET earrings waiting to be assembled. I have some soldering to do today after I am done blogging. Anyways, you came here to see what is in the shop, right? 

 So just for comparison's sake. Here is the necklace photo against the new beads :D

 

Vortex Flower "Sea Green" this is a medium size Vortex flower 32mm across. I got some KILLER photos in the sunshine today :D

 Vortex Flower "Twisted Tide"- adjustable base metal ring. This sits at a 7 1/2, but can be squeezed smaller or stretched larger. WOW huh? I really LOVE how this photo turned out. Here you can really judge it's size! I tried the desautrate thing, but you could still see the flesh color though the glass part of the ring and it looked silly.

 Vortex Flower "Ocean"- This baby is a whopper across at 38mm. The reflections in the photos and the over all shininess of the glass in the sunlight is just phenomenal!

 

"Swirly Sea Garden"- these little guys are 7-8mm and perfect for designing.

Well that about does it for today. I have some more things to work on this evening so I bid you farewell.

Much love,

Genea

Genea Beads is in 4 magazines Spring 2011!

Hello friends!

Well I guess it's finally time to make my announcements since the dust has settled on the holiday madness! Genea Beads will be in 4 magazines coming up this spring! To kick things off I believe the spring issue of Bead & Button has hit the shelves for sale! I got an advance copy so I wasn't sure just when the magazine would hit the stands. I have had a few e-mails about the necklace so I figured it must be out! On page 17 you will see my Vortex Flower Garden necklace.

Here is a picture of the cover and of my piece incase you haven't gotten the latest issue ;)

Here is one of the photos I took of the necklace where you can see more inside of the flowers. The bells and glass dangles make the lovliest tinkling sound when you wear them! I will be getting this necklace and matching earrings up in the shop soon, so stay tuned!

The next thing you will see on the shelves is the Spring Stringing issue from Beadwork magazine. I have had the pleasure of working with the lovely and talented, Lorelei Eurto! She submitted some GORGEOUS designs with my work for stringing. Keep an eye out for that! I think the date it will hit stands is February 22nd, but don't quote me on that ;)

I am not sure of the exact dates for the next two magazines, but they will be out around the same time as the others, February or March...

I am SUPER EXITED to have my very FIRST two tutorials come out in print! The first tutorial will be in "The Flow" magazine! I teach how to make my "Jaw Breaker" hollow bead!  

Photo courtesy of Evan Youngblood.

Here is what the bead looks like cool and by itself.

 

Here is a picture of the "Jaw Breakers" set in it's entirety.

If you have been LOVING my new mixed-media pieces, you will LOVE this latest issue of Glass Pattern's Quarterly! My soldered charm tutorial will be in there along with some tips I learned while soldering! Here is the piece that is demonstrated in the magazine.

Photo courtesy of Evan Youngblood, Graphic Designer and Photographer extraordinaire.

So as you can see I have LOTS to do! I will have some more items like in the magazine listed soon, so keep checking back!

Have a wonderful day!

Much love,

Genea