Tool Testing (aka A Great Way To Get New Ideas!)

I was recently asked by Amy O over at www.zooziis.com if I might be interested in testing a new top secret tool for her. She said she liked the new things I was doing with Mixed Media Art and thought the new press might lend itself to things I could use in my pieces.

First of all, I gotta say… I was totally honored to be asked. Secretly, in the back of my tortured-in-high-school-always- picked-somewhere-in-the-middle-for-dodgeball mind, I hoped that someday I would be “good enough” to be asked to test something. LOL… silly, I know. (hmmm… now that I have had that secret wish filled, I wonder what one will replace it.) Anyway…

The tool is fantastic! Amy came up with the idea of having interchangable word plates that allow you to press messages into the surface of glass. They work with the texture plate presses she already has out. She let me choose a few words that I wanted to play with. I chose LOVE, DREAM, CALM, CREATE, & JOY. I picked words that spoke to me. I think JOY is such an under rated word, don’t you? It isn’t used nearly as often as it should. Looking back though, I should have asked for LIVE and LAUGH to go with LOVE because that would make a really sweet bracelet!

When the new tool arrived, I knew right away what I wanted to do with it… off mandrel flat back discs!! (what? wasn’t that what you were thinking? LOL) I think one of the reasons Amy asked me to test the tool was that she knew I wouldn’t go for the “supposed to” way of using it. Paired with cabochon mandrels by Inspiration Toolworks, I was able to get out of my head just what I had in mind. I love these new clasps!! And I also used a couple in ACEOs that I have been working on (shown up top).

Eventually Amy gave me a gentle nudge and asked if I had tried using it on mandrel as it was designed. I was so excited by the results. I found that words came out really crisp and clear with opaque glass and more subtle in transparent colors. Both very cool, very inspiring findings. I love the texture of the word in the surface of the glass. You can run your fingers across the bead and feel the bumps of each letter. I love love love jewelry you can play with while you wear it, and these beads definitely lend themselves to that.

Anyone else ever tested tools? Did you find it inspiring? I would love to hear more about it. And if you make beads and get one of these tools, I would love to see the kinds of things you came up with for it!!

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.

Finding Possibilities With What Is Right In Front Of You

I have had a busy/stressful/nerve racking/joyous/thrilling/depressing/roller coaster of an emotional past few weeks. And if I said it has affected my creative process of late, that would be putting it mildly. My husband and I have been on the wild ride that is buying a new home and selling ours and all that goes with it. All the while, I have been trying to maintain some sort of normalcy with my daily art life.

I feel a really close connection to the people that read my blog and buy my beads and jewelry. I feel like I owe it to them to bring them cool new things as often as I can. When I don’t, I feel guilty and frustrated. It can make what should be a happy productive torch time, a miserable downer of an experience. I think I tend to put too much pressure on myself constantly trying to reinvent my beads and jewelry. Fresh ideas don’t come in a bottle, lol. So with so many other things grabbing at me for attention, it seems that creativity is the thing that is suffering the most.

In the past two weeks that our house has been on the market, it has been shown 9 times. Needless to say, my torch time has been severely reduced! You can’t have a kiln running at several hundred degrees while strangers are in the house. No, not safe. I have been really trying hard to make the most of what little time I do get these days. I had 5 articles for various publications due just last Tuesday… I have been working on testing a new tool (more to come on that!)… I had some custom orders (which I don’t normally do)… plus that want and need to make things for the people I love the most, those people reading my blog and my customers itching for new beads.

I have been making beads here and there. But I kept finding that individually, I wasn’t impressed with anything I was doing. And I am definitely a person that needs to be excited about what they are selling or I won’t do it. Slowly but surely, the piles of “so-so” beads were growing on my desk. None were piled together though… lol. There was a pile of hollows in one spot with a couple of big hole beads in completely different colors here. Then a pile of rounds and spacers and discs over there that I thought were destined for the Bad Bead Jar.

During some downtime one afternoon this week, I just started to play with the piles on my desk. A light bulb went off in my head! HEY, this one kinda matches that one…and what if I put it with a few of these… and oh look! those go with them too. In an hour or so, I had strung up 6 big sets of beads that had me busting at the seams to share.

In the post on my blog announcing I would have beads coming up, I gave my readers permission to shake their heads at me, lol. I had literally DOZENS of beads right in front of me and didn’t even realize it!! So the moral of my story… when in doubt… look at the possibilities of what is right in front of you!!

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.

Dissecting A Beautiful Design

Fabric, fabric, fabric… I love fabric! One of the wonderful things I have found through the world of blogs is fascinating, fun, functional fabrics and designers that aren’t your average super store finds.

One of my favorite finds has been Free Spirit Fabrics. I was in a local, specialty fabric shop last week, they had just gotten a shipment of new spring designs! I was instantly lusting after the fabric above. The friend I was with teased me, as I was holding the bolt and literally petting/cooing over the soft cotton.

I ended up petting the 3 yards I purchased all the way home! LOL! And as I drove, my beady inclined brain started to envision glass beads based on the designs I saw floating in the fabric. I just love the fluidity of the design and the unexpected blend of the colors.

I decided to draw out the ideas that were forming in my head. I thought that to understand where to start, I would try to recreate the part of the pattern I found the most interesting. There is a process to building up the layers of a glass bead that is very, very different from drawing. If only you could go in and add details the way you can with a pencil.

It is ironic… one of the reasons I was at the fabric store last week was a very deliberate effort to avoid a funk. The day before the trip to the fabric shop, I was dissecting my funk on my blog and lamented that its cause might be due to the fact that I don’t surprise myself anymore.

I said “when it comes to beads, I think I have gotten to a place that I can pretty much sit down and create any design in my head. Unfortunately, new designs just don’t seem to be flowing… so I am not excited… so I don’t feel that surprise and excitement.” When I sat down to make these new beads…. I learned I was wrong!

These are the first round of beads inspired by the fabric. They aren’t what I had in my head… it turns out, making what is in my head is going to be harder then I thought! I am excited by the challenge, and I am eager to continue the experiments. I am enjoying the hunt for just the right blend of colors… I am loving trying different patterns in the layers… and I am intrigued by how I am going to blend these into “my style”. I will be sure to let you know how things go along the way.

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.

Refreshing: Mixed Media Collage & Glass Beads

Hey, remember me? Yeah, I was that blogger/glass artist that thought she was too busy to keep up with more than one blog. Well, I am back! I’ve had an inspired winter and I am ready to share my creative process again!

When Lori, suggested that I should come and share again, I knew right away what I needed to tell you about… a new love… mixed media collage with my glass beads. (Of course there would be BEADS!) I decided that I want to (need to) start exploring art outside glass beads and jewelry. And it is not that I am not lovin’ every minute I spend making beads and jewelry… it’s just that I think I need to expand my horizons to spark my creativity.

I was given the book “Pretty Little Things” by Sally Jean Alexander as a birthday gift in early February. I have spent every day since getting it pouring over the pages. I love it. Now, this isn’t the first mixed media art book that I have ever looked at. Oh no, I actually have several of them, and I told you about them HERE. The thing I am drawn to most isn’t the soldered trinket boxes, or the doll heads on dinosaur bodies, or vintage tape measure tassels… it’s the collage.

In college, I had this one teacher that had us do train of thought/splash board/brainstorming stuff. It was my favorite way to try to get ideas for new projects. We would be given a topic (ex: summer picnic) and we would take a giant piece of paper and just start writing anything and everything that would pop into our heads (ex:crawling ants, checkered cloth, red, white, flags, soft breeze, band playing, music, golden tones, rock bands….) I could go on and on.

Anyway, in the new book I was gifted, Sally uses a technique for collaging that reminds me a lot of what we used to do in college. I love it. She has you write words on slips of paper, put them in a bowl and build the layers of the collage randomly from the words that are pulled from the jar. I think I have kinda held myself back from going-for-it with collaging because I didn’t know where to start. This made it click for me.

I can’t not tell you how much I loved working on this. I am calling it “Growing Glass No.1″. I love the feel of paint under my nails, charcol on my finger pads, the smell of drying resin…. my stars it is heavenly. Almost like a coming home of sorts. I have told you before, I have an art background. I went to college on a scholarship for painting. I didn’t realize how much I missed it!!

Alright, calm down, take it easy… don’t worry your little heads about it… this is just a distraction I am indulging. I am not in anyway shape or form giving up on the jewelry thing!! Mixed media is an art form that I have only peaked around the corner at… and I like what I am seein’.

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.

Farewell to a WMC Contributor…

Hi everyone.

You may have noticed that we’ve lost a “current contributor” icon over there on the left hand side. Kerry of Kab’s Creative Concepts is moving on from Watch Me Create. I want to give a big ‘thank you’ to Kerry for being part of Watch Me Create with her many colorful postings and for sharing her creative process with all of us.

Along with writing articles for the various bead and wire magazines, creating and selling great beads and jewelry, Kerry has some other neat stuff up her sleeve too, so make sure you continue to follow her blog at Kab’s Concepts so you don’t miss anything juicy!

Also, be watching for a new contributor coming to Watch Me Create soon. If you’d like to someday be a part of Watch Me Create, drop me an email and we’ll get you on the waiting list.

Bye Kerry, and good luck in your other endeavors!