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It is finally happening. I am being called more to make jewelry. Why “finally”? Well, for the longest time I have been a bead maker longing to tap into the potential of the accessory market. It was really hard work for me to design pieces for my once-a-year non-bead show.

I believe that if it’s as hard as it has been for me in that area, that I shouldn’t waste time focusing on it…that when it’s meant to happen, it will happen. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t a struggle in creating art but it’s like telling a painter to go cast bronze sculptures. NOW. It might not (probably won’t) feel natural.

But I’ve noticed something happening lately. I’ve been being drawn to jewelry. I don’t wear jewelry. But I’m starting to want to. I’ve also been starting to take notice of trends in magazines and on TV. It used to be that I could have a fashion magazine open in front of me and the latest fashions hitting me in the face and I’d miss it. I’ve always been that way.

Now, I’m ripping out pictures, subscribing to magazines (other than bead ones) and actually being inspired by jewelry I see around.

The beads above were inspired by a pendant I saw an actress wearing on General Hospital. It was this huge clear glass rectangular pendant, outlined in black. I rarely notice what actresses are wearing. But I found myself staring at it and daydreaming rather than paying attention to my one guilty pleasure on TiVo.

These were my first prototypes and I added bubble dots down the center to help mask the bead hole…the one on tv didn’t have a bead hole and I didn’t feel like working off mandrel so I improvised and started towards making it my own.

I hope to be taking these to Tucson with me next week. Stop by and see them if you’re there!

This summer has been a wild and crazy one in my house. It has all come from that big move I mentioned in my last post. The third week of July, we finally started loading up the trucks and headed across town. Well, not exactly across town… it’s more like we moved from the out skirts of town into town.

Until this week, it has been more then 6 weeks since I have been able to torch. I have never gone this long without making beads since first learning 3 1/2 years ago. Let’s just say, I have not been a happy camper about the situation. I have tried to stay creative through the transition. I have had fun picking out new colors for all the rooms in the house, and as of right now I painted 5 of them. I have stayed creative taking lots of photos, with much frustration at my camera’s lack of performance. I have over bought on school supplies. Who doesn’t love 22cent packs of crayons?!? And I think there is a bit of an art to getting all the supplies to fit in one under-the-bed style Rubbermaid tote. HA.

My studio would have been the first thing I set up, but having 3 kids home with me wasn’t letting that happen. I couldn’t hide out in my studio while they were bored out of their skulls wreaking havoc through every room of the house. But things have finally started to come together. My new house is a large (well, large to me) cape style home that had an addition added in 2000. The smart folks that built the addition put in a full basement under the new construction rather then a small crawl space. That means I have two basements!! My studio is in the new area. The space is approximately 16′ x 24′, and the south corner has three good sized windows that let in a fair amount of natural light.

My studio re-do started with pulling down the plastic covered insulation that was on the concrete walls. I’ll be playing with fire and we do not need synthetic things near by. From there I had primer sealer tinted to a color called “Bayside” to give the space a bit of color. I decided that I really didn’t need the whole room, so for now, I have a divided hung to separate my area from my storage area. It’s nice to have some place to keep things like extra tables and busts that is close by and easy to find. For the dividers, I picked out some funky checkerboard shower curtains from Target. My basement is very dry, but better safe then moldy. Plus it is a good 12ft away from the torch, so no worries about the plastic there.

My favorite part has been the “putting things in” part. I am still playing with the layout of the room, but I think I am getting close. There is still more work to be done. We’ll be having my master electrician father in law come by to rewire my area. I need a few more outlets and we want to make sure there is enough juice to support my kiln, an oxygen concentrator, a ventilation hood and some lights. Oh, and I’ll probably want a radio too. The ventilation hood needs to be put in too. It will most likely go on the wall right between those windows over my desk. That is if I don’t rearrange the room again.

Hopefully now that things are starting to come together and I am getting to create more, I’ll be back more often to share my creative process.

Kerry Bogert is blogging about her glass art beads and jewelry from her home studio in Webster, NY. Check her work at www.kabsconcepts.com

I admit it - I’m a control freak when it comes to glass. I like it to do what I tell it to do and if it doesn’t I get in a mood with it and call it names. I’ve fallen out with several glass colours before because we just don’t see eye to eye. I send them to the naughty corner of my glass stash for a while and then I bring them out again when they’ve had time to think about what they’ve done! We don’t stay on speaking terms for long, though.

What glass am I talking about? Those murky-looking pastel colours like copper green, turquoise, avocado, sage and violet. I like my beads to have crisp defined patterns and smooth continuous colour (like the ones pictured above) and that’s where those colours and I don’t get on. They have a mind of their own. They do things. Copper green gets that metallic sheen to it when I don’t want it to and sometimes it does that pitting thing on the surface of beads. Turquoise does it too. I tend to use avocado and sage only as stringer and I find that violet occasionally gets a brown tinge to it.

But I’ve decided that I’ve got to let it go. I’ve got to learn to love those glasses. I need to compromise. So these past few days I’ve been hanging out with violet and turquoise and we’re getting on alright. I recently purchased a copy of Sarah Hornik’s excellent Think Pink! E-Book and decided to give the Rubino Oro over pastel violet thing a try.

As soon as I made my first violet base bead I started getting narky with it - its streaky behaviour wound me right up! But I stuck with it, adding dots of Rubino and touches of turquoise and I ended up with a pretty-looking bead. I made more beads using a combination of my pernickerty dot placement and the ‘spreading’ properties of the glass and was pleased with the outcome. The glass let me do my own thing and it return I let it do its own thing. I added raised dots to the beads in this set because not only do they look nice and add a bit of texture, they also ‘neaten up’ the patterns. But by doing the raised bobbly dot thing I realised that I was still being really controlling and I vowed to make another couple of sets with no bobbly bits. There’s some slight pitting on a couple of the turquoise ones and a couple of brown tinges on the violet ones but the new-and-improved-bit-more-bead-lenient me is going to let that slide!

It was actually quite difficult for me to sit and make those beads knowing that I wasn’t 100% in control of the dots and lines. I was literally working with the glass - I was adding dots and stringer in my usual way but the glass itself had the final say on where they ended up. I know that I probably sound like a weirdo saying that but I’m just not a go-with-the-glass-flow kind of beadmaker. I’ve never made a proper organic bead in my life and in fact just typing the words ‘organic bead’ makes me shudder ever-so-slightly but who knows, if I carry on compromising with the glass colours I’m not best friends with then maybe one day I’ll be writing a post about my first set of organic beads!

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

This post is mostly for eye candy, and a little bit of technique critique purposes. So, enjoy!

This “lady in a dress” (this is #12) accomplished the skin and the dress with no blurring. I was happy with that. Looks like paint. (you can see the first few at an old post from here at WMC)

A number of customers ask me, “what should I do with this vertical hole bead?” I have taken some time to create some of my beads as pendants that slide onto a chain, or cord. The function is there, without having to make a pendant with wire. Simple. Everybody is happy.

I am finding myself venturing into other items, besides glass beads. Glass Marbles are one of them. Italian millefiori, and murrini is fascinating me. Taking these chips of glass and encasing them in clear soft glass is a beautiful creation. My most recent outcomes are impressive! No tool marks; just round and smooth, with organic floral petals.

You can see more of Sheila Morley’s work at her website.

I set out to start Watch Me Create to give artists an opportunity to document right out here in the open how their creative process works.  The first objective was to challenge them to design new designs and show the steps it takes to get to a finished design that they were happy with. The second objective was to show people what it takes.

People don’t realize what it takes to make designs.  Whether they be planned out on paper ahead of time or if they appear as we work.  Regardless, there is some form of thought process that goes on before, during and after if we feel we’re not quite there yet.

I’m working on getting some of my other blogs cleaned up (stuff transferred to the right places) and I came across a post about my creative process.  This is from 2006.  Since it’s been kind of quiet here, I thought I’d re-post portions and then continue on in a later post about where I am now.  So here goes…

August 22, 2006

It’s interesting to me to watch the creative process in myself. It’s only been recently that I’ve felt a creative process going on. Up until now it has been a very conscious attempt at designing and combining colors and techniques. It has felt mechanical and dry most times. That doesn’t mean that I haven’t been happy with some of the outcomes but, while I’ve enjoyed the process and the materials, I haven’t felt totally free.

If you are an artist, craftsperson, hobbyiest, whatever you want to call it…think about those other creative types that you see just letting go. Just playing. Creating. Expressing. Whether they be bold statements like a Jackson Pollack or more subdued but still free form.

I don’t know about you, but I long for that state where I can just sit down with my art and be. Let come out whatever is there to come out. That is where I’ve felt myself being led.

Enter the next step in my own creative process. First let me say that for me, this new found freedom would not have been possible if I wouldn’t have learned the basics, built a strong foundation and spent years practicing…trying new things, exploring processes and materials and really learning all I could about glass, color, equipment, tools, components and the industry overall. There is so much more to learn it boggles my mind.

Kate Drew-Wilkinson once told me that it was important to know the history of beads. I don’t think I’ve done well in that department (yet) but I have a good start and I can see the importance now. Because I spent the time researching, learning and practicing, I can now relax and not have to think as much when I sit down to work. I don’t have to design as much anymore (at least not right now), the glass does take on a life of it’s own and tells me where it wants to go and what it wants to go with. Sometimes I don’t want to listen, have a conflict with what I think I should be doing, but make myself listen to the call rather than my brain and am always blessed for persevering that way. Ok, sounds hokey, but it’s clear when it’s going on. What else is there to do when you’re sitting alone at a torch all day but argue and struggle with the voices in your head?

For me, the creative process has taken on an organic, nature inspired life of its own. That is funny to me because I never understood people inspired by nature. Another lesson in never saying never. I’m not saying I set out to create a nature piece, but it just seems that that is what I end up with…and it makes sense to me. Nature is perfect, imperfect, ordered and chaotic all at the same time. That is how my beads end up feeling.

Yikes, I’m not being very clear here today…maybe it’s not easy to explain a personal creative process…maybe that’s why artists have such a hard time explaining their work when there really aren’t any words. Now I understand better the paintings that remain with the title, “Untitled”. Whew.