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A simple way to promote your art: Ad Context
Why do people love a piece of art. I’m talking about any kind of art; music, painting, lampwork jewelry and so on. It’s because they are able to relate to it on some level. By the end of the article I’ll explain why it’s important to know this and how to use it to your advantage. This works for any kind of artist trying to get attention, build a fan base and help sales.
I want you to take a look at this image.
It’s titled “A Moment”
"A Moment" – copyright to Phil Hansen
Stop and take note on how you feel about this picture.
I went to high school with the guy who made this, his name is Phil Hansen. Phil has successfully created a huge fan base all over the world with pieces of art like this.
How did he do it? Other than creating amazing artwork he was able to enhance it by adding context to the piece. He didn’t just make it and say “There it is”, he told the story behind it and showed how he did it.
Take a second and think about how you felt about this image.
Now watch this video.
After watching the video I’m sure you feel differently. By producing this video he added a lot of context. He showed the technical side and the emotional side which transformed it from just being an interesting image to a piece of art. Context adds an emotional hook.
I suggest going to his website, www.PhilInTheCircle.com and look him up on youtube.com. These are perfect examples of what I’m talking about.
The more people know about an artist and their art, the more they feel connected to it. You can easily do this by adding context. You don’t have to produce videos like this to do it. You can start a blog and post pictures and articles. If you’re selling pendants, ear rings, necklaces or anything don’t only describe what it is, by why you did it.
To sum it all up: if something has a story, tell it. Stories help create emotional connections.
Five New Glass Colors from Effetre (5/29/09)
A week ago, my husband Mike Frantz came back from a trip to Murano, Italy. Mike made many visits to the Effetre glass factory while he was there and he found five new colors for the lampworking community. They are:
- Very Cherry
- Butternut
- Dark Matter
- Rosewood
- Lace Agate
These new colors will be available on our website in a few weeks as they will be winging their way via air to the U.S. and more will arrive a bit later by sea. We will be having a few auctions the first week of June to introduce these new colors, which will be auctioned off as assortments. Mike will be showing the paddles and beads I have made out of these new colors at the Bead & Button show in Milwaukee as well.
Butternut Paddle
Very Cherry Paddle
Lace Agate Paddle
Dark Matter Paddle
Rosewood Paddle
I have had the pleasure of making for display, a paddle and bead out of each of these five new colors and I really like this group of new colors. The Very Cherry is a bright transparent Christmas red that looks very dark in the sample bead I made, but would come out a fabulous red used over white to make a White-heart bead or used for detail work where you need a bright Christmas red. This red is a blue red and not an orange red, which is what is usually available to lampworkers. Butternut is a rich, warm golden yellow with streaks of soft orange running through it and looks good enough to eat! Dark Matter is a mysterious and surprising dark brown/gray that will blush a little dark green here and there on the surface. Rosewood looks a lot like its namesake when you heat it up and make a bead out of it and it is a truly unique blend of warm reddish brown tones swirled together. Last but not least is Lace Agate; this color is one of those organic WOW glass colors, it reminds me of variegated beach rocks that I have collected since I was a kid.
Lace Agate Bead
Butternut Bead
Rosewood Bead
Dark Matter Bead
Very Cherry Bead
Great colors for for the Bead makers and Lampworkers (05/22/2009)
Great colors for for the Bead makers and Lampworkers.
I am happy to announce that there are five new Messy Colors from CiM that have arrived. (05/22/2009)
They are “Olive”, a wonderful pastel olive yellowish green,“ Commando” that is also a pastel green that is a similar tonality as the Olive but has a bluish over tone instead of yellow. There is a dark, dark chocolate brown that is called “Adamantium” after the comic book metal that makes the Wolverine character in X-Men so strong, “Tamarind” that is a mocha cappuccino brown pastel and a fabulous coral color called “Phoenix” that can be struck from a warm beige-peach to a brilliant coral- orange color in the torch flame.
Olive bead with black & pink feathering
These five new colors add a new dimension to the Messy Color palette, providing some much desired greens and browns. Phoenix has the look of the much loved Coral “Peach Persimmon” that has been very popular. Unlike the Peach Persimmon Coral from Italy, Phoenix has a wide range of colors that can be developed in the flame by controlled striking. Some people might think that it looks a bit like Creamsicle when you look at the color coins on the website, but Phoenix is a way different kind of glass which is pastel in nature rather than translucent or opal.
Phoenix bead with goldstone swirls
Olive and Commando are two greens that have been missing from the lampworking palette and in my opinion are great additions. There have never been greens like these produced in Italy that have been available to beadmakers.
Commando with Triton dots & Goldstone swirls
Adamantium is the missing super rich dark brown which is another color that just hasn’t been available from Italy and is another super addition to the beadmakers color palette. Tamarind is yet another color that just hasn’t been available to the lampworking community and the color palette used by beadmakers. The rich mocha brown color is different from anything produced by Messy Color and widens the available palette, providing beadmakers more earth tones to use in their work.
Adamantium with Triton dots
Tamarind with Hades/Triton Ribbon & Blue Dots
Commando with Corksrew Dichroic & Goldstone
Phoenix with Triton Dots & Goldstone Swirls
Tamarind with Triton Dots over Silvered Ivory
Vetrofond - the Other Italian Glass Factory
Most beadmakers have heard of the Effetre (Moretti) glass factory on Murano near Venice, Italy, but fewer beadmakers know about the other Italian 104 COE glass rod manufacturer Vetrofond. Vetrofond is located across the lagoon from Venice on the main land in a suburb of Mestre, which is the main industrial port of the area.
Cullet Storage Yard at Vetrofond
Carts of Glass Rods at Vetrofond
Vetrofond is mostly involved with making custom modern looking blown glass lamp fixtures, but they have a large set up for producing 104 COE glass rods. In past years, they have gone out of their way to produce interesting limited runs of odd lot colored rods for the international lampworking community, like River Rock, Parrot Green, Poppy, Ocean Green, Frosty Blue and Key Lime.
Currently, there is a huge selection of odd lot colored glass rods made by Vetrofond with names like Cosmic Storm, Jupiter,Seashell Swirl, Dark Lichen, LemonMeringue, Orange Punch, Yellow Ice, Jungle Twilight, and Sweet Lime. There are over 50 odd lot glass rod colors from Vetrofond that greatly extends the color palette of glass beadmakers.
Jupiter with Triton & Dark Pink
Vetrofond Transparent Yellow with Triton and Goldstone
Vetrofond has a very unassuming front to the building which masks the intense levels of activity going on inside the factory. It is a factory which is both dangerous and thrilling to see in operation with hot furnaces, huge metal equipment and lots of organized glass shards. There is such a swirl of activity that it is mind boggling.
I have personally made only a modest dent in the huge selection of available Odd colors from Vetrofond, but I have been please with the results none the less. All of Vetrofonds colors are compatible with other 104 COE glasses and I highly recommend that every beadmaker take a spin through the Vetrofond palette, for the adventure that is contained within each glass rod.
Nyx over Vetrofond Emerald Green
Vetrofond Seashell Swirl, Ivory & Black
Review of New Messy Color Blues
I talk a lot about Messy Color glass because I really like the quality of the glass and how wonderful it handles in the flame.
A few months ago, Messy Color came out with a group of new blues to add to their line of colors. They are Freman (turquoise pastel), Smurfy (dark turquoise), Grumpy Bear (periwinkle) and Cornflower (dark blue). All four colors are of the pastel variety.
Smurfy with Triton Flower
The two turquoise colors are a fabulous addition to the current lampworking palette because of their working proprieties. If you have ever used one of the Italian turquoises, you know that they have a tendency to pit as you work with them. The Italian dark turquoise turns black /gray on the surface the more you heat it in the flame and is such a frustrating color to work with, that I stopped using it 15 years ago.
Cornflower & Pumpkin with Triton
The good news is that both Freman and Smurfy are wonderful creamy pastel turquoise colors that don’t pit or turn black. I was thrilled when I tried them out and discovered this fact.
Freman -Triton – Hades
Smurfy with Ivory
Cornflower is a dark, rich blue and the Grumpy Bear is a periwinkle blue, both colors have the same fabulous working proprieties as the other blues mentioned above.
These four new blues are the latest addition to the Messy Color palette of blues of which there are ten. The other blues are mostly transparent or Messy Colors fabulous opal colors, with the exception of three opaque blues. The other blues in the Messy Color palette are as follows:
For those who have not noticed, Glacier looks a lot like that infamous Italian Odd Lot color that was call Frosty Blue that you can’t find for sale any more.
Freman
Grumpy Bear with Rose
Cornflower
Tips & Tricks #1 - About Cranberry Pink
I did a dichroic bead demo for the Pacific Northwest Bead Society last Sunday and one of the beads that I demonstrated was a Gold Pink cored bead with different colored dichroic scraps placed all over the bead.
The reason I am talking about this bead today is the fact that I finally found a Gold Pink glass that will work inside one of these dichroic beads without cracking it and that is the Cranberry Pink produced by CiM / Messy Color.
I tried for years to make a bead like this using the Gold Pinks that came from Italy, but every time I encased the Italian Gold Pinks they would crack the dichroic encasement and even just plain clear would crack over the pink. I figured there was some kind of molecular incompatibility between the Gold Pink and Clear glass, but I couldn’t nail down what it exactly was without scientific equipment. I gave up trying to make this kind of bead for about 10 years, not wanting to waste anymore time or glass.
Recently, I realize that there was a new Gold Pink on the market and had been available for several months, that is compatibility tested with all the available 104 COE lampworking glasses and it is the Cranberry Pink produced by CiM / Messy Color. When the light finally dawned on me, I was really happy with the results I got when I took some Cranberry Pink to the studio and started making dichroic encased beads with it.
The Cranberry Pink core in one of these dichroic encased beads makes the purples, blues, lavender, pinks and silver dichroic scraps pop, producing a very pleasing color balance. The colors come out so beautiful that you almost want to eat the beads.
Cranberry Pink dichroic & Goldstone
The CiM Cranberry Pink that I use for the core of these dichroic encased beads is a Unique Cranberry Pink that is paler than the regular Cranberry Pink. I use the Unique version of this color because the regular Cranberry Pink is very dense ( so that it can be used in small amounts in detail work and produce a pleasing pink) and becomes too dark, making it difficult to see that it is a raspberry pink.
If you like using pinks in your glass bead making, I suggest that you give the CiM Cranberry Pink and Cranberry Pink Unique a try.
Cranberry Pink & Dichroic Melon Beads
Cranberry Pink with Dichroic Encased in Larkspur
Cirrus and the Other Cloudy Glass Colors From CiM
For this blog segment, I have chosen to talk about the CiM / Messy Color glass that have the characteristic of being slightly cloudy.
Bead makers often ask me why these special glass colors were made. Well, I have always been fascinated with the old European glass that is referred to as Milk Glass or Opal Glass because of the way it looks. I have looked for, bought and tested different batches of glass from different countries in Europe for the last 25 years looking for this kind of glass, which turned out to be rarer than hens’ teeth.
Cirrus with Dichroic and Goldstone
Cirrus was the first attempt at making this kind of glass and in the process to getting Cirrus to look like the old Milk or Opal glass, I learned why it was so hard to find. This kind of glass was very challenging to make and that is probably why none had been made for a long time. Making this Milk / Opal glass compatible with other 104 COE lampworking glass was another challenge to overcome because all the Milk / Opal glass that was made and used in the past was not mixed with any other glass, so there was no compatibility issue to deal with.
With much testing, CiM managed to produce a consistent Milk / Opal glass they named Cirrus after the clouds that drift over our heads. Cirrus is a transparent / translucent white glass with bluish under tones. When worked, Cirrus looks a lot like high quality Moonstones which are a semi-precise natural stone that you can find made into beads of every imaginable shape and size.
There are three other colors in the Cirrus family of thetransparent / translucent glass made by CiM. They are a beautiful blue called Halong Bay (named after a very famous & beautiful bay in Northern Vietnam), Peacock Green and Rose Quartz (which really looks like the gem stone it is named after).
I really like to use these colors as encasements over intense dichroic scrap beads. The semi-cloudy aspect
Halong Bay over Dichroic
dampens down the intense sparkle of the dichroic crystals, creating a more subtle presentation (see examples in this blog). The Halong Bay, Cirrus and Peacock Green really work well over the sparkling dichroic crystals.
I like to use the Rose Quartz, Cirrus and Peacock Green as the body of many of my beads because the colors cloud up enough to give the beads’ shape substance, without being dense looking.
I think that these transparent / translucent colors are a wonderful addition to the 104 COE glass color palette and should all be given a try. I also find that the glass rods made by Messy Color handle very well in the flame, with no bubbling or black scum forming on the beads, like I get when I use Italian Opal or Alabaster type glass.
The last thing I am going to talk about, is the interesting characteristic that Cirrus has (I am not sure if the other three colors react this way) of being slow to etch with the available etching creams on the market. Use Cirrus over a section of a bead that you want a window left in it after the bead has been etched and etch the bead only long enough to etch the other glass colors in the bead. This practice can produce amazingly dramatic results and is far easier to do than having to apply a resist to the places on the bead that you don’t want etched. Check out the examples I have posted in this blog.
Marine Wave with Hades & Cirrus Lines
Peacock Green over Dichroic
Cirrus & Pink Champagne Etched Bicone
Peacock Green with Nessy & Triton Decoration
Rose Quartz & Cranberry under Dichroic
Pattern Dichroic over Peacock Green
Cirrus over Dichroic
Why There Are Three CiM Blacks
Did you ever wonder why there were three blacks made by CiM / Messy Color? I’ll explain why – read on…. Read more