Still Hoppin'

Hello friends!

If I have not posted on your blog, I'm comin', promise. Still blog hoppin'.

Much love,

G

SPRING CLEANING SALE! 50% OFF SELECT ITEMS!

Hello friends!

Are you feeling the clutter in your house too? Spring is always a great time for cleaning and I figured my Etsy shop needed some tidying up as well! This is the FUN sort of cleaning, right?!  So what's on Sale? Take a gander at this fab collage I made in Picasa to find out :)

Here is a link to the SALE section of my shop.

Happy Shopping!

Much love,

Genea

Fixed posting for comments

Hello friends!

It was brought to my attention that some of you weren't able to leave comments. I had to change my settings awhile back because I kept receiving posts from Asian Porn sites. WTF?! So now I have altered the settings so everyone should be able to post now. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Much love,

Genea

BTW February 22nd

Hello friends!

Wow, you all just amaze me with all of the wonderful pictures and posts from today's Bead Table Wednesday!

Here I will show you two photos. I have to be mindful of my posts until I get a Pro account for Flickr.

This is the "clean" part of my table. Left : Atlantis lentil, a ruffle daisy, disc, and wing ding using Atlantis, Possible glass headpin set that needs a few more pins, rekket disc beads like the ones I posted in my necklace on facebook, smurfy wing dings, a "Z" scrabble tile for a project, rubber o's from My Elements.

Right: top corner is enameled off white chain, my soldered charm and some hilltribe lentils(my artbeads.com design in the works), more glass headpins(pastel ones are opal glass), the others are called "moonstone" colors they are somewhat translucent, a few straggler spotty droplet headpins.

Here is a little bit closer photo of the right side of the table. Here you can see the glass headpins a little better.

The little pile of opaly glass headpins are: Messy Kryptonite, Messy Crocus, and Messy Rose Quartz. Directly across from those headpins is a lentil made with NEW Messy Rainforest, Great Bluedini Unique, and silvered ivory.

The transparent ish ones under it are moon stones: Messy Peacock Green, and Messy Halong Bay and then a few spotty droplet headpins. I only got one more set done today, but I will get more in the shop.

Well lots to do!

See you soon.

Much love,

Genea

A Week of Wonder

Hello friends!

Well it's been a an interesting week to say the least. Just a few days ago Ricky started applying in Portland on a whim figuring why wait right?  Well it's a good thing he did! He got 3 call backs in ONE day which was more than he had gotten here in a month and  a half! He set up interviews, we got him a flight and he will be leaving to Portland on the 28th! It's all very surreal. I can't believe it's FINALLY happening! I'm so proud of him and so excited! So I will keep you all posted on what's going on with that.

Genea Beads will be available in a NEW location!

It's been getting SUPER BUSY in the Genea Beads studio! I have a lot going on and feel like I need to make a clone of myself to get everything done. It's super exciting!  On that note, The Bead Shop at WillowBridge center will be carrying Genea Beads! We are very excited to be working together with them. You can go to their healing arts center for some wonderful services and stop on by the bead shop to do some beading. It sounds like heaven to me!  They are located at  807 Main St. North Cambridge, MN 55008.  

Look what came in the mail

 

Here is the AWESOME pod pendant( I'm pretty sure this on in the link is the closest to the one I am wearing) I received from Libby Leuchtman! Isn't is just incredible??!!  I'm such a lucky girl! On a side note,  I guess it's kinda weird to always see pictures of people's jewelry where their head looks lopped off right? 

 Ah there we go. I am indeed, not headless. lol You just can't see the pendant's details as well in this picture ;)

I would have posted the "Week in Review" post, but all the new goodies are GONE. Lucky duckies to who picked up the pieces ;)

Um... what else? It seemed like I had all this stuff to write about since so much has happened, but here I sit and now I can't think. Lol. So I guess that means I covered the most important stuff, right?

Bead Soup Reveal on the 26th!! I can't wait!

See you soon!

Much love,

Genea

 

It's ALL your fault- Totally INSPIRED!

Hello friends!

I just wanted to share with you that it's totally, ALL Heather's fault. For what? Well for INSPIRING me!  So I don't know if you saw it, but on February 9th for Bead Table Wednesday this is what Heather posted on her blog.

 

Here is one of the photos, but you totally need to go to her blog to see the rest! She put together these bead piles from Dream Girl Beads along with some of her beautiful Willow Pendants.  I forgot just how much I loved brown and turquoise together. I had a few more beads to make for the Bead Cruise packages so I decided to use the colors in this palette.

I thought that it would be a  bummer to get all of these amazing boxes of art beads and have to put them all into bags(that and it's an awful lot of work to plan such big events), so I decided Heather needed some fun beads for her creations as well. I figured since these were some of the colors she picked out that it was probably a pretty safe bet that she liked them ;)

So while making these beads I decided to make these discs in the same color palette. I was excited to add Creation is Messy's NEW color "Atlantis" to the set. This color is so NEW it's not yet listed on the page, but you can be sure it will be added to the Blue's section soon! It will also be available at Frantz Art Glass, so keep an eye out ;)

After creating these beads I had an amazing idea for a finished design. Dang, I was totally trying to make these for my shop! 

 Here is the finished necklace. I am SO excited because I knew I wanted the discs to hang in tiers like this, but I wasn't sure how I was going to get it to work out. Well as you can see, I did it! :D I love it when that happens!

Here is another angle shot. Pretty f*ing sweet, if you ask me! I LOVE it :D I called this piece "Running in Circles". 

Wishing you much inspiration and a weekend of awesome!

Much love,

Genea

The EGGsperement- Color studies and styles for bird eggs

Hello friends!

I thought you might like to see my experiments while being inspired by spring and all of the eggs, birds, and things I have been seeing lately.

Here are a few of my favorite things others are creating....

 

Here are Heather's(Humblebeads) eggs. I finally got a chance to really check out all of the amazing things in her shop. I was especially enamored with these style eggs after learning some more about the process. I love all of the layers and earthy feel of her speckly eggs.

I also really love these eggs by Floridity. I saw them through either abs, btw, or Lorelei's site, I forget which one... Anyways, I just LOVE the look of these eggs. I love the way they were created. People are really creating some amazing things in polymer clay since I used it back when I was 14 ;)

So my wonder was, how can I take the egg design and translate it into glass with what I already have at home? Back when I first started making beads I got a collection of reduction frit, which thankfully I didn't spend too much time with, working on a hot head. Hot head torches are pretty much a more reduction flame naturally, but much easier to control and achieve the look you want with an oxygen propane torch.

Anyways... I decided to pull out some silver leaf,  reduction frit,  non-reactive frit from That Frit Girl that I had in my stash to see if I could make some cool eggs.

So first to check out some pictures of eggs on Google. Then I decided to look up birds in my area. I didn't make all of the ones I wrote down, but did some experiments on some common bird eggs.

So first to do some frit testing round beads to see what the colors look like on different bases.

Ok so listed above is the color glass I used. To keep things tidy on the photo I just listed the letters to give a more detailed description in text.

A. Fremen base with That Frit Girl New Light Yellow R-186-1 
Looks a bit too pale for egg speckles.
B. Fremen base with That Frit Girl Sahara R-162-1 This color is a really beautiful pale sandy yellow brown with hints of pink. Not quite the right color for bird eggs.
C. Fremen with Tobacco reduction frit(this was from an old sample pack I had, but check out That Frit Girls version). Spreads too much and a bit metallic for eggs.
D. Fremen with Iris Gold reduction frit reduced(again check out That Frit Girl's version Iris Yellow 218). Much better frit size for speckles, but still too metallic.
E. Dark Ivory base with That Frit Girl New Light Yellow R-186-1
Dark outline reaction with ivory glass. Still not quite the right color.
F. Dark Ivory base with Tobacco reduction frit.
Spreads a lot, and not quite dark enough.
G. Pale Avocado odd- checked out glass to see color. It's streaky on the side(which is not pictured). I think this color might be out of stock due to it being an odd.

Now remember when making these test beads you have to view them quickly and get them into the kiln, so you don't actually get to figure out the best results until your beads are done annealing.

 

Now for some egg trials. Remember you won't always have exactly the things for your inspiration in your studio when you need them, but sometimes you discover amazing new things when you work with what you've got ;)

A. Unique Ginger-3 with Iris Gold frit reduced.

Nice dark brown color, but too metallic. If you etch the bead note that it will be a lighter color.

B. Unique Ginger-3 with Tobacco reduction frit. 

Still spreads too much for that speckly look and not the right color.

C. Fremen with Tobacco reduction frit reduced.

Frit color is still too light, metallic and spreads.

Dark Ivory rolled in silver leaf and reduced, couldn't remember if it got that really pretty golden color from this style or not. I missed getting a part of the egg covered with silver leaf(see bottom by bead hole) and it looks like the silver fumed the ivory instead getting that color for which I was looking ;)

Ok well so as you noticed, I didn't quite achieve the effects I had hoped, so I decided to just play around with some solid colors. You know their are just plain colored eggs out there. Sometimes after doing many tests and not getting the results you want, it's nice to make something you pretty much know will be successful. 

I admit it's hard for me just to play and not have things turn out. I want EVERY time at the torch to produce the most amazing beads, not that there is anything wrong with the above beads, but you understand ;) It must be that perfectionist in me. I am still recovering....

So here are some plain glass eggs for color testing. I took these same beads and etched them in the picture below for more of a matte look. From left to right: effetre light turquoise, Messy Smurfy, effetre dark turquoise, nest made in Messy Canyon de Chelly(OMG my new favorite next to Stone Ground) This color has some really gorgeous color variations! eggs in effetre dark ivory, dark ivory egg.

Here you can see all of the glass etched(10 minutes in etch all) giving it more of an earthy feel by taking the shiny finish off of the glass. This look also makes them look more like clay. You wouldn't believe how many people ask if etched lampwork beads are really clay and how shocked they are when they discover it's glass ;)

So what did I learn? Well I just have to keep experimenting. I am thinking maybe a nice fine non-reactive frit or maybe some enamels. ;) Oh, before I forget, Messy has some AMAZING soft pastel colors perfect for egg making. Here are some I would recommend: Dirty Martini, Butter Pecan Unique-4, and Butter Pecan Unique -5.

Be sure to check back at the Creation is Messy site later, I did a really awesome color study of all of the Butter Pecan, Ginger, their uniques, and Ivory's. Kathy is up to her ass in alligators at the moment, so I'm sure when she gets her monstrous to-do list done, you will see the photo ;) Be sure to drop her an e-mail and tell her how amazing she is! She is out there making the glass world amazing for us lampworkers :D

Well that about wraps up my color and egg testing. I hope you learned some cool things about glass and color experimenting.

See you soon!

Much love,

Genea