This is the first in a series of explainations and trials and tribulations that I personally went through while creating what would eventually become my greatest work to date.
It all started back on November 1st, 2010. I was working at a hotel in western Massachusetts. Winter was well on its way, and I was busy playing with beads, although not entirely what to create. I wanted to start something big, something grand, something so stupendiously amazing that no one had thought to do it before. I’ve always considered myself, and been considered by others, to be one of the great kandi makers of the world, and I needed something to show the world what I could do. So I started with an idea. I’d make a Trench Coat out of beads. The idea would shift, and change, and ultimately become something entirely unique all by itself.
So I started with this:
Even from the beginning I had grand plans (just how grand, I had no idea until almost a year and a half later.) I measured around myself and came up with an idea for the design in my head, made a few mental notes, and started beading. 192 beads long. The middle, would be my raver name “Orgasmo” and I left 24 beads for that (A mistake to say the least). The sides would each have 7 sections of 12 beads a piece. 192 / 12 = 8. This was done for a couple of reasons, the 2 sections on either side would overlap in the front just like a normal overcoat. So the 3rd section (in theory anyway…) on either side would line up perfectly with the rows adjacent to the lettering so I could streamline the design up and over the shoulders without having to worry about extra designing. Each section would mirror the one adjacent to it to create a diamond effect overall. Each section would have the same amount of each color of beads across any given section. The colors would alternate from UV reactive neon, to glow in the dark as each diamond got larger or smaller. Some of my initial designs worked beautifully well, others… not so well… painful mistakes that I would pay for in blood and sweat.
Over the next few days I would be hard at work, at this point doing nearly nothing but beading, working, and sleeping (in that order), the three screens you see in the background there are my desktop running Milkdrop @ 6050 x 1080 @ 60 fps with nVidia surround on 3 GTX 260s, made for an excellent background while I was beading lemme tell you.
Here’s the first mistake that I noticed, that cluster of green beads that’s different on one side vs the other. Had to take out those top couple of rows and then keep on trucking.
And by November 5th, just a handful of days into it. I have my first letter… And I fucking hated it. I couldn’t believe I ever once thought it would look good in the first place. Crap, I thought to myself. Back to the drawing board. Off to Microsoft Paint I went, to redesign the letter A, and the rest of the letters while I was at it. The problem, is that I didn’t give myself enough space. 24 beads wide, was not enough rows to make a good enough perfectly clear letter in my not so humble opinion. So I took a pair of scissors, cut right down the middle:
Unstrung the beads that needed to be unstrung:
And began my first attempt at Kandi Surgery.
To be continued in part 2!
