Half Hollow Beads Transform Into New Designs!

When I say new, I mean new for me. I’ve only been doing lampwork for 2 years and I would never be so egotistical as to lay claim to a NEW bead design, there really is no such thing. It’s a big world out there and think of all the artists who don’t post in our circles, or even post their work online at all. I always try to keep this in my mind when I think I’ve come up with something unique. I just don’t want people to have that impression of me. I really struggle with the dilemma of marketing my work, being excited about something new I’ve created but not coming across as “full of myself”.

Do I worry too much?

But I personally haven’t seen beads like this before so they’re new for me, unique in my own little world and I’m proud of the new direction my work is taking. I love my geisha but even I need a break to experiment or I’ll stagnate, my skills need to be exercised and expanded. There are so many things I still haven’t tried when it comes to lampwork.

So anyway, back to the new-to-me designs. As you may have read (or not) in one of my previous postings on glowing bubbles, I started working on an old design again. My brain tends to run on fast forward when an idea comes, a burst of images spilling through my mind. I feel such a rush of excitement when it happens, one idea building from the one before… boom-boOM-BOOM! And this is what came from one of those moments.

This one collapsed a bit, I must have had a tiny hole somewhere or used too much glass. So on the next ones I tried to squeeze the glass thinner.

Hot Magma bead

The dots were going to be pulled into spikes, but I chickened out, afraid I wouldn’t keep it heated properly and crack the bead.

CZ Kronos Crystal Ball

This was my favorite of the 3. I remember my grandmother had this floral container that looked like a crystal ball. A black plastic base with a hollow glass globe that could be filled with flowers. I loved that thing and used to play with it, pretending to be a fortune teller or witch. That’s what came to mind while I was cleaning these beads so I think that’s going to be their new name, Crystal Ball Beads!

But wait, there’s more.

The drawback to these is that they’re top heavy. I placed the cz one onto a silver chain and it just flopped down. It still looked pretty cool and different, but I would have to place these onto silver headpins and then string onto a necklace to get them to sit properly. Not a big deal, but I had used large mandrels just so they could be slipped onto a chain. So how to fix? I decided to try one “off mandrel” which I rarely do. I worry about the glass rod breaking and to be honest I need a LOT of practice. As you can see from my geisha under glass…it did get a bit wonky. I may have had better results if I had used an extra large rod of glass, this one wanted to flop around as I worked it…

Geisha Under Glass

She looks like she’s peeking out from behind the flowers. I need one of those grabby things, hotfingers I think they’re called. I’m just not comfortable making something like this off mandrel yet. Can’t wait to try boro. See? Lot of things I haven’t tried yet. Hopefully that will change this coming year.

I have a few more ideas bouncing around inside my head, maybe they’ll be the topic of my next post so Stay Tuned!

Tracy Jerrell Akhtar blogs from her home studio in Southern Michigan. To see her webpage and more of her creations, click on TracyBeads.

Custom Order Conundrum

Yes, yes… I know, the alliteration is killing you, but what can I say? I love when titles “sound” good. Anyway, I have been debating back and forth the whole idea and process that is a “custom order”. I thought beaders and buyers would both benefit from hearing what goes on in another artist’s mind on the topic. And hopefully, it will open the doors to comments on other’s thoughts and opinions about it.

How do I define a “custom order”? For me, it is anytime anyone asks me to make them something that isn’t already made and in a box ready to sell. I think it is a pretty straightforward way of thinking. A customer who requests a couple extra beads to match ones she just bought… that’s a custom order. A gallery that “really hopes you’ll make something to go along with such and such a piece”… that’s a custom order.

When I first started making jewelry 2003, I would make anything anyone ever asked me to make. I thought, “Hey… I’ll do anything for $15… $15 means I can buy more beads.” Not only that, I was thrilled to think that someone liked my things enough to have me make something just for them. By 2005 (while just starting to learn to make glass beads), I started doing custom jewelry for weddings. I would make an appointment with the bride, bring samples of 6-8 custom designs to match her bridesmaids’ dresses and inevitably she would want to mix a bit of this with a bit of that, creating a 9th and 10th piece. Once she figured out which one she wanted, I would make enough for the whole bridal party. After 15 weddings, I was bitten enough by the glass bug and fed up enough with picky brides to say enough was enough to that.

As glass became an everyday part of my life, I adopted the same mentality as I did when I first started making jewelry. The “OMG, someone wants to pay for me to make them something!” mentality. Again, I was flattered… again, I would bend over backwards at my own expense to make buyers happy. And this time around I thought, “$15 will buy me more rods of glass”.

I don’t know when the switch flipped in my brain but at some point I started to say “NO” to custom orders. I think it was when I really started to define my own style and was starting to get slightly better prices for my beads. I started to feel that if people didn’t like what I made, they didn’t have to buy it. I wasn’t going to go out of my way to make people happy and stifle myself creatively anymore. Because that is really what custom orders started to do to me. And that is the stance I have had for about a year now. At art shows, I get asked repeatedly if I will make something custom. I tell people, nope, sorry.

That was until recently where I said yes to a few orders. Just a few. I think I have 5 sitting on my desk right now. But with these, they are a different kind of custom order… I am not letting the customer dictate the results. It is a hard thing to do and I think it takes a lot of artistic confidence (which is another completely different topic, don’t get me started.) Artistic confidence isn’t something I have a lot of, but I pretend I do and I am now enjoying saying, “yes, I’ll make you something… but I am going to make it ‘my’ way”.

I would love to know where others are at in their “custom order conundrum”. Will you do anything for a buck (and I never judge, it is okay to want to buy more beads!)? Do you refuse orders? Do you make one style of something and then make as many of those as people ask for? As business people as well as artists, do you think it is just bad business not to take orders? Do orders crowd your creativity? Do you think doing custom work make you less of an artist (and I don’t mean that in a bad way… Michelangelo took an order to paint the Sistine Chapel, right)?

Kerry Bogert is blogging about her glass art beads and jewelry from her home studio in Ontario NY. Check her work at www.kabsconcepts.com.

Avian Inspiration Again

Earlier this year when I made my first bird bead I decided that I want to create other avian inspired beads. I had a few ideas for other bird beads but had yet to attempt giving any others a try. I guess I was waiting for the right inspiration to come along. I was confident that one day it would.

I have a good friend who, along with her daughter, volunteers as bird rehabilitator at a nature center. A while back they were releasing an eagle back into the wild and my friend invited me to accompany them so I had an excuse to make the hour trek to the center where they work.

While waiting to leave on the eagle release adventure I was able to see the many wild turkeys that wander around the grounds of the nature center. I had not seen wild turkeys close up before, and I admit my vision of turkey was that of a big, awkward dark bird with funny looking red wattles. I had no idea how spectacular their plumage really is.

It was molting season so the areas where they like to hang out were literally littered with all sizes and shapes of turkey feathers. The various feathers where colored in blacks, browns and off-whites, and many of them had a beautiful, lustrous, iridescent stripe across the top. After collecting a few feathers from the ground I knew what my next avian inspired bead would be.

Fortunately, being game birds, turkeys are one of the few birds whose feathers are legal to possess. I was able to bring an assortment of feathers home to use for beady inspiration. I chose my favorite, the ones with the magnificent iridescent stripe, to be the inspiration for my turkey beads. As you can see from the pictures, I tried a couple different styles. My bird rehabilitator friends liked the one I pictured singly the best. I can’t quite decide. What do you think?

Linda beads and blogs from her home in Salt Lake City, Utah!

Frenetic Bead Making

Since my last post showing you the pod beads I’d been making, I haven’t made one. Could that be the shortest run of a line of beads that I’ve ever done? Am I starting to cycle faster? I thought for sure I’d be making them for a full year of shows after the reaction I received at their debut. Alas, I am being called in different directions and as the dot phase taught me, resistance if futile. So I heeded early and went with the flow.

Why don’t I take you on a journey of where I’ve been bead-wise for the last couple weeks. So much has happened…hang on…

Now, don’t get me wrong. I love my pods. But I was feeling uninspired. That time when nothing works, everything goes wrong and I’m left contemplating just what is the meaning of life? So, what do I do when I’m feeling that way? Go back to basics. I admit that I still don’t like dots but I really should give them more respect. They are always there with open arms (if dots had arms) welcoming me back and comforting me until ideas strike. So, I went small and I went dotty for a day or two.

I probably would have stayed doing these if the first color combination would have turned out better. I didn’t feel like thinking color (as you can see from this next bead) so I moved on. I had this new tool sitting on my table that I got in Tucson and I remembered that I promised that I would just play one day a week. So I tried that for a day.

I like this style but I soon saw that it looked like a cheap copy of JC’s beads and I wasn’t really in the mood to work it any further to turn it into something of my own or something really presentable. So, I may do them for fun but you probably won’t be seeing much of them outside of my shows.

Still feeling unmotivated I started flipping through some old magazine articles I had that I found inspiring at one time or another. I love love love Cynthia Toops beads from way back in my polymer days. There is no way I could ever do a micro-mosaic in glass…I don’t think…but I found this one picture of a necklace of hers that the shapes inspired me. It’s the one on this Lapidary Journal page down at the bottom with the orange background.

Somehow though, the shapes aren’t as striking in glass as it is in her beads but there is potential there…if I were compelled to continue working on them.

This is getting long, but there is more. I will save that for next time since I don’t think this post could handle one more type of bead in it without making you go blind. I’ve been a bit all over the place, as you can see but I think I’m settling on something now that is totally different than all of these.

Lori Greenberg blogs about beads and the business of beads from her studio in Cave Creek, Arizona. You can see more of her beads at her web site: www.lorigreenberg.com.

Cutting Edge Bead Design

A little while ago I found myself with a rather large molten wad of glass at the end of my mandrel.

I had lost myself in thought as I added rod after rod to the “bead”. Of course I was giving very little thought to what I was going to do with all this hot glass.

So when the mandrel finally got heavy enough to force my attention on it I found myself mushing the mass of glass into a cone… I even started to take out some aggression on the poor thing.

After a little while I had a very off center, very large bicone…. and no interest in finishing the shape.

I spied a knife sitting on a plate left over from lunch (this is not an admission of eating in my studio, by the way). I took the knife, wiped it clean on my pants and started carving into the bead.

I liked the way it felt. I liked the way it looked. I liked how it forced a bulge into the straight line of the bicone. I liked that it left a distinct crease with detailed and sharp angles at the bottom of the valley it created. I just liked it! It felt good. So I kept going. And then I coated it with enamel and reinforced the shape with using only my knife from lunch.

I went on to fall in love with the results of the hour and a half I spent creating that bead. I loved finding the process. I love the beads that result. I love seeing people react to the different-ness of those beads. And I really loved discovering the perfection of my butter knife! It totally lacks serration so there’s no threat of unwanted texture. While the “cutting” side is thin and sharp for fine lines the other side is thick and square to make wonderful sharp, thick indents in the glass with crisp edges. And the cutting side is gently tapered towards the end of the knife which allows me to roll off the bead so nicely… I’m so pleased that this perfect knife has serendipitously found its way into my work!

OK. Back to the beads.

After that first journey with the knife I started to look at different ways to affect shapes with it. And I started to think about size, which of course matters. In order to really have fun carving into the glass and to have enough to really get it moving around in a way that excites me, I seem to need a good amount of it. So part of my challenge in this design is to keep the size down… or at least stay aware of it. And therefore my beads in this series tend to be quite large, 60-70 mm (2.5-3 inches) long. But that’s part of their statement. Though I have to admit I’m still working on knowing exactly what statement these beads fulfill.

So far, for me, it is an exciting process that produces exciting and sensual shapes which hold color and simple graphic design well. And I intend to keep enjoying it!

JC Herrell is a glass artist who blogs from her home studio in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. See more from JC at JCHerrell.com or jcherrell.blogspot.com