Sylviebead Journal

Wednesday - Half Way Through The Week!!!! WOO HOO!!!

I don't know WHY this week is getting to me... it shouldn't be. I'm in a really good mood, but BOY am I living for Friday!!!!! I just keep waking up in the morning SURE that it's the weekend. That's the problem!!!

I'm very excited about what I'm going to talk about today. More musings on the creative process. I had 14 people sign up yesterday for my online workshop which is great, but too many people for one class in this format, so I'm going to have to split things.

I didn't expect a lot of people I didn't know to request membership in the group, so it grew faster than I was ready for AND I can anticipate it continuing like this once word gets out. Because it's SUCH a great thing... seeing people develop creatively. (I know that might sound stuck up since it's my workshop, but it's not ME that makes it exciting... it's seeing people find inspiration and develop creatively and have "aha" moments. THAT is what's so much fun!!!

I want to share my own creative development here today and if it gets too long, I'll continue it tomorrow (or another day... we know how that goes!)

When I taught the "creativity class" (as it was first known) the first time, I participated along with the students and one of the beads I made in the class spurred my work in a WHOLE new direction and is really responsible for the whole tone of my work now. This will be funny, but it's all from THIS bead.....

Hard to believe, huh??? That this WEIRD bead could be where my WHOLE body of work today comes from!!!

That THIS bead
<----- led to THIS bead --->

And a whole lot of other things along the way.....

So... How did that happen??

You KNOW I'm gonna tell you!!! (and it won't be short, so non-beady people might want to "fast forward")

Here's the story. In the class, I gave the assignment to make a bead based on a black and white photograph by Karl Blossfeldt. I picked one at random, so my personal preference did not come into play.

<---- this is the picture I also had the parameters that it had to be done in 4 colors... and only those 4. AND if those 4 colors weren't available in the glass I had, I had to do my best to replicate the colors using other materials (such at enamels).

These were the colors (i forgot to add the green square...oops) ----->

So, that's what I had to go with and the funny bead at the very beginning of this post is what resulted from the assignment.

The class met together and gave each other ideas for future beads, based on the bead that they were looking at (they didn't see the photo or the colors). One of the class participants said "it looks like one of those crazy cool cakes where all the layers are different colors" (think "Ace of Cakes" because even though this was way before that show... that was what she was talking about)

I went home from the class and had this bead sitting around and thought... I'll try to make one of those cakes as a bead!!! (it's funny... I just realized that this beadmaker made cake beads herself!! Never thought of that till this moment. Melissa... do you remember this at all??)

ANYWAYS... the bead inspired me to make a crazy cake bead, so I did. I made a funny birthday cake bead. UNFORTUNATELY that bead was in my old house and didn't survive the fire, so I don't have a picture of it to show you. Let me tell you, however, that it was HORRIBLE!!!!!! It wasn't cute AT ALL. BUT it sat around on my table for a while and made me think of something else...

Girls with birthday cake hats on!! I have no idea WHY I thought of that, but i did. SO, I made a bead like that. And it too was HORRIBLE and didn't survive the fire. (be glad... it was truly tragic... very scary to look at!!) BUT it sat around on my work table with all the other bead castoffs that I just couldn't bear to toss.


And one day, after taking a Sharon Peters class where I learned to make multi-bead sculptures... I came up with this ------->

The birthday cake hat made me think of crazy tall hair... very B-52s or Marge Simpson. The candles caused me to make the raised dots on her hair. She was wacky and honestly... her face is pretty scary. BUT I learned something and THIS set of beads was a springboard taking me to the next thing...



My Head Over Heels Project which was a beaded version of the multi-part bead made with seed-beads. Because it was made of seed beads, she was a lot more flexible and could bend over backwards to be a bracelet!!! And my beadmaking life changed right then and there. I won't give you the long story about that. I think I've told it here in my blog at least once.

And Head Over Heels was a springboard to 2 other big projects... The Clothesline and Splish Splash (but we're not even talking about those here... so WOW that cake bead did a LOT!!!)

Head Over Heels led me to doing other things... more "big haired girls" and I started making these fun drawings which were sort of interpretations of my head over heels girls. The pink picture here is an example of this.

And THAT led to something else...

The Halo neckpiece.
<----- In the drawings, the faces were more subdued, so I made beads that were faces more along those lines... angelic. Inspired by those drawings AND by renaissance paintings where the angels have halos that almost look like big hats (or gilded "big hair"), I created these new face beads. I turned them into a necklace.


THEN that piece took me back in a different direction.... making little beady versions of my older fairies, but with big hair. I call them Fairy Godmothers.



THEN I looked at that pink drawing and the halo faces and thought that I could make a vessel where the hair was the vase.... or maybe it wasn't even hair anymore... it was just a face peeking out of the patterns... sort of Gustav Klimt-y....
And the vessel up at the top was born. Taking us to where I am today as a beadmaker!!!

SEE??? One thing led to another. ALL because of that ONE crazy "cake" bead that was an assignment from this class COMBINED with an idea from another beadmaker. THIS is what is possible!!!!!!!!!! And even though it's sort of "tooting my own horn." Not a ONE of those pieces looked like ANYTHING else that was out there in bead-land at the time.

THIS is why I'm teaching this class!!!!!!!!!! and that is the end of my long long story. It made me happy to see how far I've come. :)

Thank you again Melissa. I don't know that I ever realized until this week what a PROFOUND influence on my beadmaking your ONE little "crazy cakes" comment made.

tiny blah blah blah...

coffee - Starbucks Mocha - I needed some chocolate today. Some days are just that way.

music - OMG. I was just in a store and they were playing a DANCE version of Total Eclipse of the Heart. That song was BAD the first time around. WHY would they re-make it with a dance track???!!!!!!!! And I have NO music with me here at the office today to get rid of that horrible memory!!!! "turn around bright eyes....." AAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!!