Pleasant Surprises Don’t Happen to Me Often.

After my recent show I crashed, as I usually do. This wasn’t a particularly hard show…it was local and the hours were not too early nor too late. And there was a Starbucks. Regardless, I slept for two days afterwards. I’m such a wimp. Upon returning after a show I always feel like I should be at the torch but I really don’t have a purpose. What the heck would I make? My next show isn’t until September. I guess I could work on orders.

As I sat down I wondered what would happen. I didn’t have designs in mind. I didn’t even have color ideas. I dreaded the thought of just sitting down and playing because that never turns out well for me. But, I sat my butt down anyway. And this is what happened:

More large, flat-backed medallions that more than stand alone. But wouldn’t a whole string of them, choker-style, be cool too?

Somehow the bright colors called to me…which they usually don’t. Simple forms on a grand scale.

They’ve already morphed into something else and I better get out to the studio to see how they turned out!

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.

Orange Passion Pendant Renews My Interest in Making a Bead

Look! I made a bead!

Okay, so what’s so special about that, seeing as how I am a lampworker after all?

Well, I gotta tell ya that I may be the only lampworker on the face of the earth who never practiced making those 100 spacers or perfected a simple round bead. I suck at it. I discovered sculpting, my beads grew and grew larger until they became sculptures, and I rarely try to make a wearable piece any more. . .

One of the rules of marketing for an artist is to always wear a piece of your work if at all possible, so I try to keep one or two wearable overgrown beads to wear. Yesterday, I sold my favorite one, and I figured it was time to make a new one. That’s it in the picture, and I gotta tell ya I am pleased with it! It’s only about an inch long, but it sure packs a nice bit of orange-y pizazz.

Whoops, I gotta run! Gotta fit in some torching time today. . . and methinks, I’ll be making one or two beads just for the fun of it!

AngelinaBeadalina is running behind yet again and so instead of leaving you a clever message here will just say: www.angelinabeadalina.com for links to my blog, my Etsy shop, and my BeadArtists.org gallery pages.

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.

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.

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.