Sunday, May 29, 2011

Never Say Never

Hey everyone! I am back! I know it's been a while since I've posted. I took a hiatus from Glint Gear after working every spare minute on making product for the trunk show back in February at Gallery Black Lagoon. But I am back at the cutting table and ready to rock Glint Gear again! Can't stay away too long from something that you love, right?

I wanted to share a recent discovery about Glint Gear... and that is, "never say never." I said I didn't want to varnish the painted sections because I didn't want to lose the texture differences that occur in the painting process. But I've been using one of my new bag styles with all the Glint pieces varnished. I am a good test subject for Glint Gear because I am VERY hard on my bags. I throw them around and generally treat them rough. And the varnished pieces look great. Not getting dirty, and the cracks that I varnished over are frozen in the varnish and not moving. OK.... I am going to start doing what I said I wouldn't do... varnishing all the painted swatches before I sew them on. This not only helps with wear, but it also actually does make the colors pop even more. And those benefits outweigh my adamant stance about not flattening out the textures. Experience really is the best teacher!

The bag in this picture was a test model I made for the trunk show back in February. My mom had sent me these wonderful vintage bag rods she found. I had been dying to find a way to use them other than the traditional way. I LOVE the way this bag turned out and get compliments on it regularly. I made another one similar with an interesting hardware treatment that used a clip, a metal ring and wooden handle. Yea, odd experiment! I'll have to dig out a photo of it. That odd bag, which I named WTF?, was the hit of the show and sold. This one I carry would have sold, but in my frenzied experimentation, I made the two bar straps too wide and made the opening to fit my small hands. LOL. The next iterations will have smaller bar straps to create a wider hand opening. I have 3 more of the rob/knob sets, so am cutting out more of these. I need to either find these vintage rod/knob sets on Etsy or Ebay or find dowels and knobs to make them myself. 

Look for posts of new creations coming soon. And feel free to drop me a line at glintgear@gmail.com or on my fan page to let me know what's up in your creative world.

xoxooxo