Thursday, October 4, 2012

Inspiration into design- The "Sea Horse" hearts.

blog by Genea C-K

Hello friends!

I am SOOOO excited about my new series of beads inspired by the lovely and talented, Marianne Kasparian of MAKU Stuido, and our very own, Staci Smith of S L Artisan Accents.

From left to right: MAKU heart, Staci's Heart, my heart. The thing about being inspired is to take an idea and make it your own in your medium. It was a total feat in glass to pull of this similar style with my spin. My hands were sweaty and my heart raced! The birth of the "Sea Horse" heart was born!

Here is a photo showing the sizes of some of the hearts. I tried them in a few different sizes, but really loved making them BIG. These are some of my LARGEST beads to date. When you get to making beads this large they get heavy and it's lots of glass to keep warm as you design.



Here is a close-up of one of my favorites. I just LOVE the stripey rainbow snake cane and the gorgeous twisted spiral sparkling pool :D

Love the back side too( he he). The whole " I hate to see you go, but I love to watch you leave." So many wonderful design elements to look at!

But... success usually comes with failure. When making these HUGE hearts I focused most of my heating efforts on the fin and the little antenae while flashing the rest of the bead to keep it warm. The thing I failed to do was keep the bottom part of the cone warm. OOPS! Duh, right?! This is the thinnest area of glass besides the fin. I was literally "heart broken" about this particular heart.

This one too :( Oh sad. The good thing about failure is that is presents us with an opportunity for a new success. So how does that work? Well upon sharing my sadness with Staci she had some ideas to repair the heart and enhance the design. Her idea is add some precious metal clay to the hearts and "restore" them! I am SOOOO excited to see what she comes up with!

I hope this will inspire you do push the limits of your medium and to take all of your failures and turn them into a new success.

Have a wonderful day!

xo Genea

2 comments:

  1. I can't wait to see what she comes up with to fix them too!!! I was nearly in tears when I saw them broken and stared for a bit to think of what I could do with them! They are awesome

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  2. Me too! I was really excited when she asked if she could work on them :) Oh me too. I was SO bummed. I broke 2 out of the 3 hearts I made that day. What terrible odds! Thanks so much Kristen! xo Genea

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