How Lucky Can One Girl Get?

I've got jury duty AND a root canal, all in one week. How's that for lucky?  Still, it could be worse. I can afford the root canal, and the agony before the doc relieved the abscess made me realize how amazing modern dentistry (and medicine) is. I've never had an abscessed tooth before, and now I know why people used to just yank bad teeth out, even without anesthesia. Wow that was bad.

Sometimes life gets in the way of beading. I especially regret that now as I'm really starting to get back the flow of ideas that sort of dried up before when I was so overwhelmed by the needs of getting the software out to market.  One project after another leaps out of me, and I've got far too many to try even if I could bead for hours each day.

Our Etsy Beadweavers Team has a monthly challenge, with each entry being a listing in our Etsy stores.  This is my entry for October. The original title was supposed to be "Gifts of the Earth" because of all the semi-precious stones used in it.   The theme of the October challenge is "Inspired by Picasso" so I retitled it and related it to the theme as required.

From October 9 until October 15, you can visit the EBW blog and vote for your favorite entry. Every month there are some amazing entries, you'll be sure to get an eye-full, and find a favorite!

I've also been inspired by the November challenge theme, on Spirals, and have started a project I hope will develop into something worthy of entry.

Meanwhile, I'm learning to bead crochet, and trying to earn a living.

Notice where that last falls on the priority list.

Jellyfish in Tuxedos and Beading in Reverse

I started this new piece of bead embroidery last week. It started as just a brooch, and I didn't know if I should add fringe or not.

It was fun, making little individual bezels around each pearl. I scrounged through my stash for black, white, crystal and the slightly-bronzy-but-mostly-black-bugle beads I used. 

Other than the pearls nothing made me think of sea creatures...until. Until I put that fringe on the bottom. 

Now, though, my first thought after I added a few of the fringes, was "Jellyfish in a Tuxedo." A very formal, decorative jellyfish it is, too. 

Adding the fringe also forced an orientation on the brooch, which it hadn't had until then. Any way up looked good.  So I'm a little conflicted. I like the fringe. And yet, I'm not sure if it adds anything substantial to the piece.

In other news, I'm struggling with another piece. These are the bits I started with...  Below is an intermediate stage, already ripped out. That one big asymmetrical glass bead is wonderful. It's got a smooth yet glisteny finish, and a slight blue moiré pattern on the surface.  It's nearly 7 inches long and just makes you want to touch it.

But it's giving me fits trying to balance it out, or embellish it or something.  I started out with this swagged embellishment with turquoise heishi, and balanced by a string of African trade beads and bone beads on the other side of the strand. Didn't work. Then I strung a whole neck strand of the trade beads and bone beads, and hung the focal as a dangling pendant at the center. Hmm. A bit suggestive with that big thing hanging between the breasts, but okay.  Perhaps not everyone has a filthy mind.

Then I tried caging pendant with random netting of the turquoise heishi, with the small red beads at the intersections of the netting. Once again, a disaster.  Ripped that one out too.

Perhaps I need to quit trying to gild the lily, or decorate perfect simplicity. But it seems interesting to me that the more experience I gain at beading, the more I seem to rip out. Maybe it's an intermediate stage before I learn better how to know whether a concept is good without seeing it in reality.  I certainly hope so. I spend enough of my life at my computer typing backwards, I'd hate to spend equivalent amounts of my beading time beading in reverse.

Onward!

New Project, Could be a Long One

I laid this out and got started today, on a project that will take me through an upcoming trip to Mendocino. The image is from a photo I found on Astronomy Picture of the Day, an amazing 360 degree fisheye shot of the night sky and a forest with dark hills and city lights in the background.  The photographer is Luc Perrot.

The circle of the image is 5.5 inches in diameter. I asked my husband the Math Guy to recall the formula for the area of a circle, and he tells me "Pi Are Squared" which after some clarification, I figure means that we're talking something north of 75 square inches here. Really? Yow! That's a lot of beads if I go for solid beading all over it.

But I had intended from the first to let the black ultrasuede background be part of the picture, only beading those areas that I want to not be black.  This is pretty heavy ultrasuede, part of the package of scraps I got a while ago from Fields Fabrics. So I won't need an additional stiffener for it. It will hold shape well by itself.

This is the palette of beads I chose. I'll be adding more, as I stopped by Beads Beads in Orange today and found some that will add quite a bit to the project. 

I also got a few different packages of beading needles. I was surprised on the spiral bracelet how much difference it made when I switched from a size 10 to a 13. Since the teeny part of the spiral is 15/0 beads, the smaller needle made pulling through much easier, rather than having to use a pliers to grab it, as I had to do with the size 10 needle. You'd think by this time I'd know that the right tool makes any job easier, faster and more pleasurable.

The final plan for this embroidered piece is going to include sewing it onto midnight blue ultrasuede, cut and sewn to fit over my old Kindle cover. I may further embellish the cover material around the black-backed embroidered portion. And I may decide to try to sell it.

In order not to infringe for my own profit on the copyright of Luc Perrot, the photographer of the amazing image, I will use his photo as inspiration only, and not copy the image literally.  I will adapt and change it to make it my own, and continue to give him credit as the inspiration. 

I will keep my faithful readers updated on progress on this project, as I always think it's interesting to view other artists' work in progress and you don't get to see a lot of that in blogs. 

I'm planning some other cool spirals too.  So stay tuned.