Beads as Buttons/Clasps

Thinking a little bit outside the box, a large, flat bead can be used as a clasp in a necklace or bracelet design. All you need to do is add a seed bead to catch the thread or cording and you have a ready made clasp!

I've posted a series of single bead-buttons that I've paired up with a seed bead to show how a size 8 seed bead fits right into the hole. The holes in the bead/buttons are a little larger than normal - if you use sating cording or yarn like I do, you need a larger hole.

This is a preview of what I'll be putting up this week in my etsy shop and website. Thinking outside of the beadbox can help you use your beads in creative ways!

Etsy Showcase or Great beads go to a Great home!

The Etsy showcase ended in some successful adoptions! These lovely beadies were purchased and are going to a good home! Yippeee!! I'm looking forward to see what the customer makes from them!

In other Bead World news, I'm saddened to tell you that Urban Glass will no longer host the spring Bead Expo. Urban Glass is a glass studio - so it's not the end of Urban Glass, just the end of the Bead Expo. Good luck Urban Glass!

Seed beads and crochet....

Something a little different for this Friday - I am enamored of seed beads and crochet and have been for a long time. When I hit a creative block in beadmaking, I'll crochet or beadweave to get my juices flowing again. Here's a picture of soft bangle bracelet I made completely. I handfelted the underlying felt rope and then I bead crocheted the bangle together. I wanted just a peek of the yellow felted rope with the red beads to give it high contrast. It's soft and blingy! Can't get much better than that!

Etsy Showcase!

Lampwork Diva is one of the featured artists on the Etsy Showcase for June 28, 2007. The Showcase has alot of awesome stuff on it daily. So go over there and check out today's Showcase!

P.S. that I can't forget: Happy Birthday to my nephew, Shane today! How'd he get to be in his 30's? :-)

Make your Bead Blog Reading Easy

I like to read a bunch of jewelry/bead blogs and I found a way to make reading them easier - BLOGROVR. It's an add on for the web browser, Foxfire. Foxfire is PC and Mac friendly so anyone can download it and get the add ons. I've added it to my website - it's a little BLOGROVR icon on the left under the BWO Crow. Once you get it, here are a few blogs that are worth subscribing to:

ME! Lampwork Diva
Art Bead Scene
Earthenwood Studio Blog
Humblebeads Blog
Elaine Ray
Lori Greenberg

Ready to Go! Hair Spirals

I mentioned earlier that I welcome customer suggestions and that one of those suggestions was to create a spiral to wear in dreadlocks. When I make a new bead, I like to wear it or have someone wear it to test it out - is it wearable? Some designs are beautiful but aren't wearable. The spirals have been very wearable. So when I made the hair spirals, I wanted the customer who suggested it to wear them. Here is my customer, Amber, wearing the glass hair spiral. Doesn't she look adorable?!? Since Amber has given them the thumbs up, I'm going to add them to my website and Lampwork Diva's ETSY shop

Amber has her own etsy shop - Raimbow Tree where she makes fabulous handcrafted felted headbands, bracelets 1960's style dresses and such - make sure you stop by and see what she's up to!

Seed Beads!

I love seed beads! I've made alot using them over the years - here's a simple one that shows off the seeds nicely in a multi-strand bracelet. A few silver lined transparent seed beads give it sparkle - ooooh la la!!

Beads & Seeds!

Here is the first in a series of "Beads & Seeds" I'll be offering for seed beaders. I've paired the 21mm by 31mm oval periwinkle "webbed" flameworked cabochon with a set of periwinkle/multi-hued size size 11 seed beads. I have lots and lots of seed beads that I don't use as much as I did before so I'm pairing them up and letting them go! The seeds are a full vial worth. They'll be going up on ETSY.

Panda-Licious!

Inspired by the Amigurumi dolls I've been crocheting and the Anime pandas I've seen, I've been at the torch creating little pandas - some so cute you just want to eat them! Hey! That's a cute idea...Voila! Panda Cupcake!

I've put them up on Etsy and on my website! They're Panda-licious! But you can't really eat them!

Your to do list today - check out these!

Check out my interview on ArtBeadScene today. I love those beadmakers! They're the best group of business women on the planet - not to mention wildly talented!

While you at it, drop on over to etsy and see the new Treasury sponsored by ArtBeadScene

Flickr!

I love Flickr! So many beautiful pictures and so little time!! Here's a yummy concoction from Melissa Lee for the ArtBeadScene June Challenge, Let them Eat Cake! A sweet necklace to commemorate her son's 1st birthday, it's full of whimsical Lezlie Belanger (aka Canterbury Keepsakes) lampwork beads. Pass the cake, please!

A Foray into the Outdoor Market

As a beadmaker or jewelry designer, have you ever sold your wares at an outdoor market? Last year a thread on one of the glass boards encouraged jewelry designers to try the market. So I did some research and found a local market and reserved my space.

If I were a fiction writer, the outdoor market would be the place to do character research. The market is a true feast of the collective American persona. That persona is quirky, very quirky. It may be unfair to think someone's personality is represented by their Sunday morning clothing, a Tweety t-shirt, a pair of lime green terry shorts that are too tight and worn out or the straw cowboy hat. But it seems that some aspect of personality is evident Sunday morning despite the fact it's 8 30 am.

A 60ish woman wearing a pink floppy hat, pink lipstick and fuschia linen shirt walks over to my table. I feel awkward and out of place with my table full of simple single bead necklaces. Most of the tables here are vegetables, flowers, antiques, garage sale items and baseball cards.

I break eye contact with the Pink Woman to see a 50ish man walking by wearing a a white shirt with a diagonal print of guitars. Wonder if he has a velvet painting of Elvis at home? Or does he make guitars?

The woman in the pink floppy hat looks up from my table and says, "Pretty" with her pink lips and walks away. I looked down at her feet, she has on cotton candy pink Crocs.

Characters, Americans are characters.

Updates to Website

Spent yesterday updating my website You can order a custom color in the Spiral beads. I've also added a page for beads featured on Art Bead Scene for the monthly challenge. So go on over and check it out!

Bad hair day.....

I've been working on making faces in glass....this is my latest bead. I like the face but what's up with that hair? I was trying for a crown but this is what I came up with. I'm hair impaired. She's having a bad hair day!

Jewelry too!

Before glass beads and jewelry, wire jewelry took up most of my time. I was living in near Sabino Canyon in Tucson, Arizona at the time and I just couldn't find any jewelry I liked. A friend suggested that I walk downtown at the end of January to look around at the gem shows in town - if you don't know already - Tucson Arizona hosts the worlds largest gem and mineral shows in the world during the end of January. Of course, at the time, I didn't know that and was surprised to find out what all the traffic jams had been about. I bought a few beads and stones. I picked up a copy of Handmade Jewelry: Simple Steps to Creating Wearable Art by Carol Grape and made two sets of earrings. Hooked, I found myself a week later at one of the local bead shops signing up for a wire class. I took every class they had - I loved it!

I still love wire - you'll see it throughout my jewelry designs, in my stitch markers and in the bracelet above. I use primarily sterling silver as it has the best temperament for jewelry design.

What's your favorite material to create with?

Niche Market Research: Anime North 2007

Over-Protective-Parent Spends Weekend Shadowing 15 year old Anime Fan! Those are today's headlines - yep, I'm back from the largest Anime conference in Canada! I might have mentioned before that my son (aka The Boy) is a HUGE fan of Japanese animation but if I didn't, I'm mentioning it again. He's been a fan since he was 4 and discovered Speed Racer and Pokemon I played Pokemon Stadium for hours trying to get my Togepei to evolve (yeah, I know Togepei is a weak Pokemon but how else was I going to play hard and still let a 5 year old win?!?)

This is the second Anime Conference for Over-Protective-Parent but it was the largest. I go to shadow The Boy and at the same time I can do some research into a niche market. The Boy made me into an Anime character shown above. I collaborated with him on some beads awhile back. I kept telling him I could make his Chibi style drawings into beads - and I did! An Anime "Con" might be the right place for them, but I needed to do some research.

I saw alot of food themed beads, donuts, tofu, cupcakes, strawberries made of polymer clay. Very cute and low price points. I saw a display of elaborate paper flowers made into pins. Some of the artists had made very small printings of their drawn characters and glued them onto the back of a glass nugget - then they attached a magnet or a pin. At dealers tables were base metal and enamel necklaces of berries, computer game "fruits" and letters - those were between $12 - $20 Canadian funds.

There was alot a separate area for the Art Show. The Art Show might be a more appropriate place for an Art Bead. Most of the beads I saw made into jewelry were inexpensive. A handcrafted Art Bead such as the one I've shown today would sell for between $70 - $100 Canadian funds. The painted beads are hand drawn then handpainted with custom mixed enamels onto a sheet of glass and then fired. But I'm not done with the bead once the painting is finished. A base bead is made in the flame and I melt the painting onto the base bead in the flame. It's quite a process but you can create small paintings in a bead - there's nothing quite like it. I have one of The Boy's characters in glass that will last thousands of years. That's some serious handcrafting!

I have that crossing the border thing to look into too - I have no idea how to start researching selling across the border in Canada! But in the meantime, I could sell beads that appeal to the Anime fan on line. I'll do some more research but I'm lucky to have a ready - made focus group (The Boy and his friends).

Have you explored a new niche market lately?

Pictures worth a thousand beads!

Yes, I know - a trite saying, "a picture is worth a thousand words" but in this case, it's worth a thousand beads because that's what I'm making in these pictures - beads and spirals! During Wednesday's demo at AirSep, the company photographer made the rounds taking pictures of the celebration for the company. He usually takes pictures of oxygen concentrators and generators but on Wednesday, he had some different subjects to photograph - a nice mix for him that day. His name is Phil and he kindly shared the photos he took while I was making beads. Cool, huh? Thanks for sending me the photos, Phil!

I've never seen my minor torch from this angle - the candles look good!

I made the fingerless glove that I'm wearing to protect my left hand from the heat of the flame. It was a frequently asked question - isn't your hand too close to the flame? Isn't it hot? How do you hold your hand so close to the flame?

The glove protects my hand but I also have gotten used to the heat. I've built up a tolerance to the heat on my hand.

Have you built up a tolerance to something?

Demos....talking while winding hot glass on a hot day

I did a demonstration yesterday of flameworked glass beads at AirSep, a manufacturer of oxygen concentrators. I have one of their concentrators and it's been a real workhorse - so I was happy to go over and make a few beads with an audience. I've discovered that it's a real art!

I wasn't really prepared to talk while I made a bead. When I work in my studio, it's a solitary pursuit of the glass - I don't have to describe what I'm doing while I'm doing it. Being a sign language interpreter, I'm comfortable with watching and not commenting. Not so for the audience watching me! The sales representative who was my contact narrated while I made a bead.

Oh, I get it! I have to talk!

So, I started to narrate while I was winding hot glass on a hot day. I found myself stopping when I was trying to explain the technique. Makes for uneven beads. I was glad that they were demo beads and not likely to survive past the vermiculite cooling to get to the kiln at home.

Then comes a tap on my shoulder. The man who is the creative genius of the company was watching the demo with his wife. He asked if he could have the bead I was making as a memento for his wife.

It was the worst bead of the bunch - I had been talking alot through this particular bead and it was particularly uneven.

Sure I said. But I need to anneal it first. Let me take it home, anneal it, clean it and drop it off next week.

No problem.

Thank goodness! A good bead comes out of the solitude of creating in the studio - that's where I'll make the twin to the demo bead - a nice evenly balanced bead.

That's what I did yesterday - what did you do?

Hair Spirals

Here's the hair spiral I made from the customer suggestion. The customer, Amber, was nice enough to send me an email directing me to a picture. The picture is a bit small so here's a link to Amber's etsy shop where she sells really cool one of a kinds!

Design Flexibility = hair bling!

A good design is flexible - take the spirals for instance. I posted a few in my etsy shop and got an inquiry about altering them just slightly. The customer wears her hair in dreadlocks and she liked the spirals but wanted them open at the top and bottom in order to twist around her dreads. What a great suggestion! To wear them as jewelry, it's best to have the ends closed so the spirals will stay on a stringing material - but as hair bling - the ends need to be open!

Another great customer suggestion - and it's about wearing the beads in your hair! Hmm, do I sense a trend?

Tuckered out.....

I'm back from Beadfiesta and tuckered out!! I did two shows two weeks apart and now it's catching up with me! Standing so long on my feet on the concrete floor at Beadfiesta has made my heel sore. I'm sitting as I type with it on a bag of ice trying to bring down the swelling. It's cold, it's wet but ooohhh soooo sooothing!!

I'm throwing a baby shower for a friend of mine on Sunday. I'm having a ball running around buying everything I see for her - my son is 15 and I'd forgotton how cute those little booties and onsies are! The best thing I've bought so far is a book for the Mom to be entitled "Motherhood is not for sissies!"

Can I get an "Amen?"

Customer suggestions....

Spirals in Lime Green, originally uploaded by Lampwork Diva aka Cindy Gimbrone.

I love the suggestions I get from customers. If you make a suggestion to me, it will usually appear in my work. The Lime green spirals today are a good example. I had a customer suggest and request an "even twist" spiral bead. So I made one for her. I liked the idea so much, I've created even twists in other colors. I'm loving this lime green - the opaque glass shows off the texture in the spirals so well!

So, don't be hesitant about making a suggestion - I love to hear from you!

Beadfiesta! Monticello, NY

I've re-stocked from Urban Glass and am ready! I've got more spirals in lots of colors! Beadfiesta is this weekend in Monticello, New York - click on the title above for details!

I love the name - Beadfiesta! Sounds like fun! I feel like a Mariachi band should be playing in the background! I love the show hosts - Mac Arts they're friendly and treat the vendors well!

Hope to see you there!!

What to do with a large holed mandrel?

lathe rings, originally uploaded by arthurjewelry.

While staring at your mandrels, do you ever wonder - what kind of bead besides a large disk, can I make with a large holed mandrel? Cruising Flickr this morning, I found Arthur Hash's lathe rings. Hmmm...it just says large holed mandrel to me! Take this as inspiration and see if you can create the spirit of his look with a large holed mandrel! When you do, send me picture and I'll post them here on the blog. This is a quickie - ya got until April 30th!

A month full of Challenge!!

April is my Challenge month! First, is the Beadwork Challenge. The Spirals debuted via the Challenge and have been very well received. They're available at Cindy Gimbrone Beads. Next is the Art Bead Scene Challenge. I've taken the ABS monthly challenge as inspiration. I've created birds taking flight - a sculptural bead that I've never made before. These turned out well - there are blue birds, white doves (love birds) and cherry head parrots for some vivid color! If you'd like to purchase any of these birds - drop me an email. Prices range from $8.00 - $50.00.

ABS Announces Monthly Challenge!

Myself and some fabulous bead/button makers have banded together to create Art Bead Scene. Art Bead Scene (ABS) is an interactive blog with the goal of uniting bead artists of all materials and the jewelry designers who use art beads in their work. An art bead is a bead, charm, or component made by an independent artist. To us, art beads are incredible, tiny works of art made by hand from the finest materials by some of the best artists in this country and around the world. I'm so excited to be a part of this group of fabulous beadmakers!

ABS introduces the first Monthly Bead Theme! This month's theme is Taking Flight. Let your imagination soar to interpret the challenge. You might be inspired by flying creatures, flying objects, the sky and air, or anything that makes you think of flight!

Any handmade object qualifies. This challenge is open to jewelry-makers, fiber artists, collage artist, etc. Beads by themselves DO NOT qualify.

Go to Art Bead Scene for details on how to enter.

Upgrading and fingerless gloves....

A new oxygen generator arrived at my door on Friday. It's phase one of upgrading my studio equipment. Tomorrow, I'm getting on the phone to order a larger torch. I've been talking about upgrading for a year - exactly. Last Urban Glass Bead Expo, I was asking all of the other lampworkers what torch they used, how did they work , etc. etc. I've been doing that for a year now all the while saving up some money to buy. Tomorrow is the day!

I crocheted myself a cotton fingerless glove to wear while torching - it protects my hand from the infrared that comes from the torch - makes a big difference. I had to crochet it short in the fingers so that the mandrel doesn't get caught up in the glove while I'm turning the bead. Love it!

On the spot designing....

It was a gorgeous weekend in New York City! The sun was bright, the art beads were fabulous and the customers were cheery! Thank you to everyone who stopped by to say hello and/or purchase beads!

I had made one shawl pin with one of the Chakra Hands as a foray into selling them. I demonstrated the shawl pin to many but one woman showed a particular interest. She though it could be used as a hairpin. Being game, I took it off and we put it in her hair. Voila! It WAS a hairpin! She bought it and walked away happily with it. I was just as happy because I now had a new item in my inventory thanks to her!

Yesterday, I received a lovely email from her:

"Just wanted to let you know how well it works out as a hair ornament. I found a simple way to just secure it inside the bun on top of my head, and just the hand sticks out, totally visible. It's really a cute conversation piece. And all the energy is really now centered in my head, ha!

So now you have a new item to sell -- a hair pin.

Sincerely,
Evelyn"


Thanks, Evelyn!

So if you have bought beads from me and designed a piece of jewelry or home decor with them. Please send me an email and let me know - better yet - send me a picture so I can post it on my blog and website. I'd love to see what you're making!

Spiral sets, NYC and while I'm gone see Artbeadscene!

I'm offering the set of Beadwork Challenge beads on my website. I had a request for a Water Spiral set, so I've created one!

Well, the intrepid beadmaker is off to the Big Apple to sell some art beads at the Urban Glass Bead Expo! Hope to see old customers, meet some new ones and talk to jewelry designers! I'll tell you all about it when I get back on Tuesday!

While I'm away, pop on over to a terrific new blog on art beads - Art Bead Scene - a new blog just started by an awesome group of beadmakers of all media who I am fortunate enough to be associated with! Great content and very talented beadmakers!

April/May issue of Beadwork!

YIPPPEEEE!! The April/May issue of Beadwork is out! I'm on pages 88-89!! I've been talking about the Challenge coming up and now it's here! I love the fresh unexpected way the editors of Beadwork used the spirals!

Speaking of spirals, they're on my website. I'll be adding more color options later but in the meantime, if you don't see a color you'd like, feel free to email me your request!

What to do with a Spiral? Instant fashion!

I've made spirals with the high twist in different places on the bead, middle, end or even all the way around - that lends itself to being worn horizontally rather than vertically. These spirals are made on a 3mm mandrel so you can run a purchased necklace through it. Voila! Instant fashion! You can interchange the spirals to suit your mood!

Spirals

I'm happily locked away in my studio winding spirals for Urban Glass, Beadfiesta and my website. If this is the first time you're reading my blog - welcome! And you might be wondering, "why spirals?" I've taken this from my website:

What is the significance of the spirals?
In the drive to express ideas through my glass, I wanted to express the never-ending cycle of life. How events will happen at one time in your life and then circle back to them again. We have our own life-spirals and we travel around on them and come back to events although maybe not in exactly the same way. A spiral can bring you peace too, the assurance that everything WILL circle back around. In that sense, it serves as a rudimentary mandala for us to meditate upon.


So, I chose to make spirals in glass to express that idea - glass is a perfect medium because of it's potentially fragile quality. A glass spiral can be beautiful, colorful, reflective yet if you don't treat it with some care, it could shatter.

Urban Glass Bead Expo March 23-25, 2007

Here's the picture of me at the Guggenheim Museum in NYC. My good friend Molly drove me up to the museum before the Urban Glass Bead Expo last year. The Bead Expo is coming up in two weeks - so I'm frantically trying to get ready!

New this year at Urban Glass! I've made Spirals that will be in the April 2007 issue of Beadwork. These are really fun beads! They'll be making their first public appearance at the Urban Glass Bead Expo!