Southern Flames Bead Exchange- Lucky Me!

Last week, our Southern Flames chapter of beadmakers met for our super fun annual bead exchange.  Of course, the word "exchange" is used loosely, because it's that old game of everyone put something in the center and take turns either opening up a newly wrapped package or stealing from someone else.

 This time, I stole.  Sylvie Lansdowne makes these funny "unfortunate pets" beads, and this drawer pull with a kitty was her exchange bead this year.  It makes me smile.

I am thinking this might end up becoming one of my drawer pulls in my studio.  I might just need to buy a companion to make it a pet set.  Or perhaps fix up my old studio dresser and collect a variety of drawer pulls from my glass friends...

See you tomorrow!

If You Bead, You Have To See This...Beaded Laughter

I haven't laughed this hard in a long time.  Pop over to my friend, Sylvie Lansdowne's funny new blog...and be ready to smile.  (I'm thinking I might need to print this photo!
Just click here to go...hurry!

Display at The Mansion

These kind of look either like some weird kinds of jelly fish floating to me.  But of course, they're just some beautifully made, ladies' hats.

Upon my friend, Sylvie Lansdowne's suggestion, I stopped by The Mansion in Savannah to check out their art displays, during our recent visit.  They had quite a few antique cabinets filled with gorgeous hand crafted hats of the same vintage.

Looking at them, I wonder about the almost lost art of making them and  whether the recent Royal wedding revived the interest a bit?  I can't help but admire the artistic artisan aspect to them.  I would love to learn more about how the flowers are made, and what could be done with hand dyed ribbons as much as how to shape a hat.  I guess making cool objects will always be an interest of mine.

There is a local Atlanta shop, Nicholas Kniel, who has hat making classes.  The last time I visited, (he has a wonderful selection of feathers too), there were 3 women making hats at his back table, because they were attending the Kentucky Derby.

So what do you think?  Should there be a movement to revive this craft?  Would you want to learn how to make them?  Would you want to own one?

My Video from Demo Daze (And Sylvie Lansdowne too!)

My friend, Sylvie Lansdowne and I were the featured artists at FlameTree's Demo Daze for the month of June.  What a blast!  Lots of folks showed up and a good time was had by all!  Had to say it, but it's true.

Here is a link to a condensed video of the demos that Maureen McRorie made. It has my seahorse and dog with a bird balancing on its tail and Sylvie's three part delightful mermaid.

Well need to give you a little of the background too...  The room was very comfortable temperature wise, with a large air conditioner blowing hard.  This made the much hotter torch than usual play a few games.  And I had chosen dark ivory glass because of its "gooeyness".  So you can imagine what it was like in there, if you melt glass.  I felt like an acrobat with that hot ivory moving all over the place. I chose that glass, because sometimes I get chatting during the demo and wanted a glass that had a little more "give" to it.  It sure did!

And later, as Maureen was putting together the video and adding music, she asked me, "what song do you want?"  Does anyone out there know what music goes with a seahorse?  I thought perhaps reggae, maybe Hawaiian, but I ended up just picking Jessica by the Allman Brothers.  Although it has nothing to do with seahorses, it just sounds "happy" and that's what making seahorses does to me.  Hard to feel sad, when you see those cute little faces appear.

So that's the behind the scenes dirt on the demo...  Now here's the LINK so you can watch it.  (you thought I forgot, didn't you?)

And if you can come up with seahorse music, please post and let me know.  There must be something out there!

NOTE:  I just heard, the music is copyrighted and Maureen has temporarily taken it down until she can find some "free" music to use.  Sorry to tease.  The video is fun and the seahorse is so cute.

Demo Daze at FlameTree Glass

Thursday night, Sylvie Lansdowne and I had a great time demonstrating some of our whimsical glass art at FlameTree Glass in Roswell, GA.

I went first.  Yikes, that tanked oxy and phantom torch were quite a difference from my small concentrator and Minor that I generally use.  But what fun!  I could make such different and much larger pieces using that great set up.  I chose a one of a kind seahorse focal bead to demonstrate.  The gooey dark ivory Moretti glass combined with the heat, made it both a challenge and a delight.  I'll post a photo after I pop by FlameTree to pick up my work.

Because my allotted time wasn't up, per request,  I also made a little spotted dog with his long tail extended and a bird sitting on the end of it.  I love playing with heat control and seeing what I can do to stretch the glass.

Sylvie entertained us with funny comments as she made one of her gorgeous multi part mermaids.  Oh they are so pretty and she is generous with her tips and tricks.

Maureen and Lance McRorie were the consummate hosts too.  Food, drink, and lots of air conditioning were offered along with the free demos.  You can find more dates, topics and presenters for future Demo Daze on their website, http://www.flametreeglass.com.

Colourlovers.com Addiction

If you are ever stuck in a beadmaker's creative rut, this is a one stop shopping place to find crazy wild color combinations, patterns, palettes and to also design your own.

Caution: you may become addicted. I don't know, but this might be as much fun as Facebook.

I have just become familiar with Colourlovers.com, because this website is necessary for homework in one of Sylvie's Finding Your Voice creativity workshop, which I'll write about in a different posting, once I do the homework.

But for now, I'd like you to take 10 minutes and
go start familiarizing yourself with the website. It's wonderful. Want a new color combination? Go to the palette section. Inspiration needed for your next set of beads that is out of the box? Click on the pattern section. Want to just scan colors, you've got a section for that too.

There's a lot more for me to explore on it. After I picked up this week's homework pattern, I continued on to see what was there. I was looking to see what related to my sculptural work and it all does, just in a slightly different way.

Look for future blog posts about how I incorporate some of the resources of this website into my own art. Now more importantly, what can you do with this resource, or what have you found on this website that I didn't mention?

Trying Something Different

This week's Find Your Voice's challenge was to combine two known beadmakers' styles into a single bead.
So I came up with this fish.

One does sculptural work and the other has a very organic, kind of ancient feel to her work. I knew this would be fun and an excellent idea for beadmakers to try new things.

So I started with a base of that CIM color that looks kind of mossy green, (anyone know the name?) and I added some stripes and details. I was hoping they'd show through the assorted enamels that I sifted over it afterward.

I added a little frit to the body (forgot to reduce it, darn it.) and then added silver foil to the fins.

I really loved how it looked right out of the kiln, but if I was going to make it look ancient and more of the one beadmaker's style, then I had to acid etch it too. I left it in for about half an hour. I was sorry that there was just a smidgen of silver left, but knew that would probably happen.

The best part of Sylvie's class assignment , is that made me do something that I don't normally do. The colors are different, the style is different and you know what, I had a great time making Magda. (You didn't know that's her name, did you?) . So now I'm challenging you. Try picking two styles and combining them. Send me a link so I can see what you did. I'd love to see the results.

See you tomorrow.