Petal Progression: Glass Tabs and Lentils

When I say the words ‘floral beads’, what do you picture?

My guess is that you’re thinking of encased, plunged flower beads, or those pink cased stringer roses. Or maybe beads with raised blooms, pretty watercolour effect petals or even sculpted flower beads perhaps?

All of those floral beads are fabulous and I love them but for the past few months I’ve been trying to come up with different ways of decorating beads with flowers. I wanted to make floral beads that weren’t donut-shaped or round. I wanted them to be relatively flat and to incorporate a bold flower design.

In February I came up with these lentils featuring an hibiscus design.
Although I was pleased with them I felt the design could be more delicate. Also, the way the I created the pattern meant that I was limited to using just two colours of opaque glass. I’m sure that I will revisit this hibiscus design at some point and I’ll do a spot of fine-tuning to it.

A few weeks back I saw a fabric design that was bright red and covered in white outlines of flowers. I immediately knew that I just had to try and make a bead similar. I did a few doodles and came to the conclusion that the only way to get the effect I wanted was to literally ‘draw’ the flower outline onto the bead with stringer. Up until then all petals and flowers that I’d placed inside and on top of beads were done in an arrange-the-dots sort of fashion.

So I pulled some very fine stringer and set about drawing white flowers onto bright red lentils. It took me quite a few to get the geometry and positioning just so but when it comes to beads and fine stringer I have endless patience and will not be beaten!

I made more flowery lentil beads in several different colours but again, although I was pleased with the overall effect I felt that I could maybe take the design one step further. And that’s exactly what I did when I made these tabs last week.

The basic flower is the same as the one on the red lentils but this time I’ve added some stamens and I’ve given each flower a slightly raised centre. I’m really happy with the way they’ve turned out. I’ve moved the design along but I feel that there is still some mileage in it. I have some ideas that I’m going to try out in an attempt to take this flower drawing project another step further.

I’ll keep you posted . . . . .

Laura Sparling is a full-time beadmaker in Southampton, UK. She sells her beads through her website www.beadsbylaura.co.uk.

A new direction emerges. Disk Mania.

Whew, I was beginning to think I was never going to have something worthwhile to contribute to this group again… But after a six month break from all things bead related, I’m back and excited about where I’m going with my beads and jewelry!

When I last made beads, I was having fun with hollows. I love building the disks, pushing them together and watching them inflate with the hot air being trapped inside. But they take a little longer to make and being a bit impatient, I wanted to come up with something quicker. I mean, it’s been six months, I had some catching up to do! That’s when I realized I could just leave them as disks… duh!

So, I started building disks. I can actually get five of them on a mandrel if I’m really careful and pay close attention to what I’m doing. And if I keep them simple, I can make quite a few in a fairly short period of time. In the pieces I’m making, they don’t have to be perfect, in fact, I don’t want them to be perfect. I want them to look edgy and unplanned, giving the necklace or bracelet more visual impact. I’ve even come up with a name for the series that is floating around in my head, something else I’ve never done before… Dsk! Dsk! Dsk!

So here I go, moving in a new direction, thrilled to have another chance at creating! Sometimes taking a break isn’t all bad (although it feels pretty bad when you’re going through it)… Sometimes it lets you open yourself up to new possibilities…

Nancy Sells Puffer is a lampwork bead/jewelry artist from Grand Rapids, MI. Check out her very own blog here and visit her website at www.nancysellsglass.com

Can I Get a Do-Over?

Remember when we were kids, playing a game, and we messed something up, and we’d ask for a “do-over”? Most of the time, the do-over was granted, because who amongst us hasn’t goofed up at some point or other, and would need to ask for the same at a later date?

I apply the Do-Over Principle to making jewelry. It’s a pretty cool principle — if something hasn’t sold for a while, instead of relegating it to the bottom of the jewelry pile, it gets a Do-Over.

Take this necklace, for instance:

I really liked it. The dichroic glass has no stringing hole — only the center hole — so making a lark’s head knot with silk ribbon seemed a natural choice. Instead of knotting it to hold it in place, I used a large-hole silver bead, and then wonder of wonders, I found an orphan lampwork bead that complimented the dichroic glass beautifully. I finished the ends long, with two sliders, so the wearer could choose what length the necklace should be, put it over their head, pull the ribbon ends, and there you go.

It didn’t sell. Nope, nope, didn’t sell.

There were a couple of things nagging me about the necklace. One, the picture looks great as it lies there. But when you pick it up, the ribbon wanted to slide to the left, to the narrower end of the triangle, and nothing I did would stop that. It wouldn’t slide a LOT, but just enough. Second, the ivory ribbon, even though clean as a whistle, kept making me think, “that needs a wash”. Maybe because of the edge stitching? And maybe people didn’t understand, how the adjustability worked and just thought it was a complicated mass of string. At any rate, pretty glass, but it wasn’t finding a home.

Here it is after a Do-Over:

I changed the orientation of the triangle by gluing a bail on the back of the glass. I decided to pick up the pink in the glass by using a richer-color ribbon. The ends are finished, with a chain extender. I slid two sterling bead caps onto the ribbon to hug the bail to make it look less empty, and then added the lampwork bead back onto the ribbon. The hole in the bead is small enough that it will stay still unless you move it, and I like the Fidget Factor.

I have to admit, I still like the design of the first necklace better, with the lark’s head knot and all. But I’ve learned something important in jewelry design — sometimes the things you aren’t as excited about sell the fastest, and it’s important to make yourself experiment with things, even if they occasionally lead you into spaces you normally don’t occupy. You just never know what will happen — you may hit the ball out of the park with your next Do-Over.

Lemonade Stand for Art

There is a challenge I am issuing myself and I think I can relate it to a lemonade stand if I try. See if you can follow me with this…

What is a lemonade stand about? I usually had them when I was little. My Mom or Dad would take me and my sister to our grandparents’ house. They lived on a golf course, so it was easy to set up a little stand by the 3rd green that was in there backyard. I think we charged a quarter a cup. Most golfers would buy a glass and give us a big smile. Others were nasty grumps that would fill their cup at the water cooler on the next tee.

But then, why lemonade? I know for one, it is because it is tradition/cliche. But then again, it is/was because it was what was on hand. Personally, I can’t stand lemonade and in fact, it was the only thing that my Mom ever got sick on while she was pregnant with me. I have to choke it down. So my thinking is there was always lemonade around because I had drank up all the other flavors. It was the leftovers, lol.

I think lemonade stands are about making do with what you have to get something you want. I wanted to sell lemonade to earn money for things. I can’t remember anything I wanted to get off the top of my head, but I am guessing it was candy. We weren’t well off people, my parents couldn’t afford to give us allowance, so if we wanted something we had to do things to earn it. In hine site, it was probably very good we had to earn things rather then having them handed to us all the time. I think it is a lesson my kids need to learn (but we’ll save that discussion for another day).

A few weekends ago, while I was cleaning the garage, I did a lot of organizing to my glass desk space. There was a bucket full of rods I had been lazy about putting away. There is an overflowing tub of shorts that I saw I had been adding some not-so-very-short shorts to, too. As I was trying to put away all those rods, and sort through all those not short shorts, something dawned on me. I have a ton… a ton… of glass. Okay, maybe not a ton, but certainly enough to last weeks, if not months. I have gotten in the habit of ordering glass every time I run out of a color. No more transparent teal (one of my favorites), well, let’s put in an order… oh and while I am at it, I am kinda low and turquoise… oh and isn’t that a pretty shade of copper… might as well get some ink too… my orders end up costing me $200-$300 at a time (sometimes even more). And I place 5-6 of those orders a year. The result is my fully stocked glass rack and too many colors to count that are not getting used.

I really started to think I am being too wasteful. And the more I organized, the more I realized that I really need to start making do with what I have. The thoughts organized further and I started to think what a great artistic challenge it could be. Inevitably, I am going to run out of my favorite colors, just like I would drink up all the packs of Strawberry flavored Kool-Aid first. But what a challenge it could be to find inspiration in colors I don’t usually use. Like yellow… hello… doesn’t this necklace rock? And I can’t remember the last time I ever used yellow!!

Waiting as long as possible to reorder and making do with what I have will be helpful in other ways too. Being that we are purchasing a new house, my husband and I have put each other on extremely tight spending leashes. Absolutely NO unnecessary spending!! Now, glass isn’t “unnecessary”, it is a very obvious business expense. But I know I could be more conscientious about what I am doing. I could certainly use my “lemonade” colors (this by no means applies to yellow only) and earn some pennies for new things I want for the new house (like a new sofa!).

Do you think you could do it? Could you go as long as possible without reordering supplies? Could you challenge yourself to be creative with alternate colors you wouldn’t normally use? Could you be resourceful, penny-wise, and artistically inventive? Could you have “A Lemonade Stand of Art”?

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

Color and Insomnia

Most people who know me know I suffer from chronic insomnia. I can’t really remember a time when I didn’t have trouble falling asleep. This would probably not be a problem if I was free to go to bed when I wished (3am) and wake when I wished (10-11am). I’ve never, ever been one to bounce out of bed, cheerful and ready to attack the day. Oh no. Not I. It’s more of a slow, staggering, where-the-heck-is-the-shower type of rising.

I have a husband and a son, so I therefore get to bed at 11pm (read for an hour to try to relax the mind) and then get up at 7am (staggering) to start the day with the kidlet. My first attempt at creativity doesn’t start until 1:30pm, after I’ve dropped Zack at preschool and hit the gym, and by that time, I’m eyeing the bed with longing and hoping that maybe, just this once, caffeine will actually WORK on me.

So, many times, I fall into a color rut. I can design a pretty bracelet while I’m tired, but often I can’t get my mind to think of new, exciting, or unusual color combinations, and I end up making something pretty, but (to me) “normal and boring”.

I get tired. I just can’t think. So I’ve come up with a solution called a Color Book. I cut out clipping from magazines — bits of clothing, photos of flowers, Pantone swatches, paint chips, anything that gives me an “a ha!” moment.

This helps get my mind out of “I desperately need a Starbucks” to “oh yeah, I do have other beads I can play with”. It’s amazing, like a walk outside, when I flip through this book. Ideas start clicking and I start grabbing beads out the cabinet and cool things start to happen…..

The color book helps me get out from under making an all pink, all blue, or all purple bracelet (easy for me to do!) and gives me a much needed injection of mental caffeine. It’s a great artist’s tool that I highly recommend!

Now, if I could only do something about the insomnia……

Lori Anderson designs and blogs from her studio in Easton, MD. You can buy her work at her website, Etsy, and craft shows, and read more about her at her blog.