Crackers and Mini Me

I wasn't sure whether I had shown you one of my custom orders with the real deal. Meet Crackers and the little glass Crackers that I made. Sure love these orders and making their owners happy. My beads make great holiday ornaments, statues and of course, jewelry pendants. Contact me, if you'd like a special someone interpreted in glass too.

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Crackers Big and Little

Meet Crackers- both of them. The larger of the two is the real Crackers and the smaller is the glass bead I made for Crackers' human mom, for a Valentines Day gift.

I love these custom orders. It's fun to see the photos of the pets and then to translate them into glass.

Crackers is a "Porky"- Pomeranian and Yorkie combo.. Cute, eh?

See you tomorrow for more fun. http://www.StudioMarcy.blogspot.com

Meet Guppy ~ From Plushie to Focal Bead

Meet Guppy. Guppy is the favorite stuffed animal of one of my customers' little girl. Apparently, Guppy isn't allowed to go everywhere the little girl goes, so her Mom decided to find her a stand in who could.

So she contacted me through my etsy shop and sent me a variety of photos of this beloved pink seal. I was touched. Obviously this is a well loved "friend" and as a fellow Mom, I have my memories of how attached my kids became to certain toys.

So let's talk about the process a little. How did I get from step A to step B?

I looked at the shape, the texture and the face on Guppy, to decide how to form this and where the hole needed to be.

Then I picked my colors, which you fellow glass artists know are limited, when it comes to pinks.
I used the Effetre pink and CIM's Gelly pink for the two shades.

My first two efforts, (not shown) were pretty scary. I had tried to give Guppy some texture, so she'd look more like a plushie, but she looked more like a seal wearing a lion costume, as I added fur around her little face. Needless to say, those two got scrapped, but they were helpful in figuring out the body shape and flippers.

On to a smoother and more refined Guppy. No textured fur. I built the body like a large donut shape at first. I wanted to get my height of the body with that. Then I started adding on to parallel sides. A little bit on the side where I would attach the head and face and a lot of glass onto the back side. It looked a little like an asymmetrical torpedo. I wasn't worried about the exact shape at first on the back flipper end, but wanted to get the mass of glass in place.

I added the head in the Effetre pink and flattened the part where the CIM pink face would go. Two dots where the eyes would be added and then the face. Just a bit of black stringer for the simple eyes and nose. I chose not to make the whiskers, because when they're fine lines, they tend not to look very good...at least when I make them.

I shaped the front flippers with a little bit of detail made with pliers and then heated the back flipper side and slightly pulled it out for the elongated shape. I added to large dots of CIM and gently mashed them for the back flippers. A little more plier work for details (and maybe a touch of razor blade for more definition and we were good to go. Guppy is on her way to be wrapped for Christmas. What a fun gift and an everlasting memory.

You can see more angles of Guppy in the sold section of my shop. Just click here to get to it.

Do you have family favorite items that can be translated into glass memories? Or have you done it already? This was my first custom order like this and I really enjoyed making it. I could easily imagine a little girl loving that pink seal.

Follow Up From Music Video Beadmaking

I wanted to show you my little girl from the Blind Melon video, "No Rain" , which I posted about on October 30th.

She was a little harder to make than I had guessed and this is my second attempt.  

When working in sculptural glass, it's always important to choose the order of sculpting and adding glass to manipulate it.  The most delicate usually goes last, so there's less chance of it cracking.

As you can see, the  bee antennae are pretty delicate and would chill easily.  Then there are the ruffles that will get cool , because they're kind of thin.

But the part that I hadn't thought as clearly about were her glasses, which are so important to the bead.  In the video, the glasses are as much a focus as her costume.

These I premade out of copper wire.  And the ends needed to be tucked under her hair.  So they went on pretty early.  And as my beadmaking readers know, copper melts pretty easily.   On my first bead,  a few flakes of the copper glasses came off on her face and the glasses had a small piece that was melted out of them.  

I had to add her eyeballs after the glasses  and of course her face needed to be warm enough to receive the tiny stringer I was using.  Good lessons learned and now I have my original Bee Girl in my bead box without glasses, with a clean face and so very cute. (A little facial surgery as well as Laskik was performed.)   Still deciding what to do with her next.  I'm rather fond of her.  For more views of this custom order, visit her in my Etsy shop.

ps...and her photo background was one of my experiments gone bad.  Do NOT use white paper towels thinking they'll add a nice "texture" to the photo!