Snowdrops

Snowdrops are one of my favorite spring flowers. They are the first bulbs to bloom, sometimes in January while there is still snow on the ground. Seeing a patch of them flowering outside the front door always brightens my day. A while ago I made a beaded snowdrop flower, complete with plant and bulb, in the style of a botanical drawing. I wasn't very happy with the flower itself and I never did anything with it. Recently I was asked to make a pin out of it, and I decided to make the whole thing over. Originally I had used delica beads, but I wanted to see if the round beads looked better. I made some samples out of Japanese and French beads to see which was best for the petals. 

I decided to use both, one for the center and the other for the petals. they are different shades of white, and I am hoping to give the flower some dimension. Of course, I can never make just one flower, so now I am thinking I will make a necklace too, maybe with some ivy leaves and berries for accent. Time to order more beads! Really what I need to do is figure out how to attach the plant to a pin base, right now I am thinking a stick pin would work. The original was made around a piece of sterling wire and it turned black, so that's out. Oh well, I will just make more flowers until the beads and findings I ordered arrive and figure it out then.

Work in Progress

This is the selection of Swarovski beads that Shipwreck awarded me for my sugar skull entry.

I picked out some of those beads and added some from my collection to use as accents on my Haute Couture necklace.

I have made two bases, one for the large center flower and a second that is to be embellished with crystals. I haven't figured out how to work the fringe/tassels in yet but I have hopes that I will be able to use them somehow. The pink is a pretty significant color in the fashion design I picked as inspiration so I will need to make sure it is represented. Instead of sequins I thought to use stars behind the crystals. 

This contest has been a bit of a stretch for me; I am not really a high fashion kind of a person. I have been trying to keep the design refined, but then I think of the show Absolutely Fabulous and I realize that I have no clue. The project is coming along slowly, in sections. I decided to make a multi layer necklace to help integrate the different components and colors. I have had some design issues; the large flower I made for the center is very heavy so making sure it is supported and hangs right is tricky.

I try to view these competitions as an assignment for a class because they tend to make me to try things I wouldn't normally think of, and that's always good because even if I don't like the finished piece I have learned something.

From a postcard

The monthly Etsy Bead-weavers challenge is one of the beading blogs that I have been following. I find it is an interesting kind of market research; to see which designs are the most favored by the general public and which the bead weaving team chooses is useful, my favorites are usually ones that get the least votes, but I am not very mainstream. I like to work on the projects and try to complete them by the deadline even though I don't have an Etsy shop for my beadwork. The October challenge was proposed by Marsha of Haute Ice Beadwork. The title is "Picture Postcard Palette" and it asks you to create a piece of beadwork based on a postcard, not to reproduce the picture, intstead she invites you to use the colors and their distribution amounts on the card to create your beadwork. An interesting proposal, except I don't have many postcards, especially not of places. The only one I could find that wasn't a show announcement or bead store advertisement was of a tie-dye tapestry by James Preston. He has been creating tie-dye for many years and is the former owner of Positively Haight Street in San Francisco. The postcard is mainly blue and white in pretty much equal amounts with purple accents on a black base. I found the perfect aqua blue in a Czech bead. For the black and purple I decided to try out some of the superduo beads I have been buying recently. I also used some size 11 and 15 white. 
 

Even though I wasn't trying to copy the pattern the finished tiles had obvious influence from the pattern of the tie dye. I decided to make the components square because I have been seeing a lot of round designs with the super duos. I like to use the two holes independently; I work with each hole as if it were a single bead instead of working the thread from one hole to the other on each bead. i am not sure what the finished piece will be, maybe a bracelet.

Evolution of a design

 Working through the design for the morning glory, I think have finally gotten it right(?) Each time I make a flower I think it looks great until I make the next one incorporating the changes I thought of after the previous attempt. This time I didn't use any extra increase in the brick stitch. I used the same beads as last time, size 10 vintage French beads and mixed brands of Japanese beads with a few Czech thrown in. 

For the leaf I used a Miyuki green lined green size 8 triangle bead, they didn't seem as flashy as the silver lined beads were. 

Now that I have done some bead "sketches" I am ready to work on the finished piece. I am envisioning vines and flower buds and maybe a few seed pods. I like to pick examples of the flowers I am beading so I can reference them as I work, fortunately morning glories bloom until there is a frost. I usually mix other flowers into a necklace to accent the primary blossoms; I saw some nice asters and snapdragons at the lake the other day that might be interesting. The praying mantis that lives on the porch with the morning glory would be cool, but that's a project in itself.