BEAD SOUP TIME AGAIN!

BEAD SOUP is on again!  I am not sure if you noticed, but I used to have pages on the top where you can check out other posts of my creations.  Well, I had an issue with it, but I finally sat down and figured out what I could do, not to fix the problem, but to change the way I have my pages set up.  So if you look on the left, you will now see my pages.  Please take a look there to see what else I have to share.  I made a BEAD SOUP mix page too and this is where I will list all the participants, or you can take a peek now and visit Lori Anderson's blog...there are a ton of amazing jewelry artists listed...ENJOY

I have been trying so hard to get this embroidered design just right!  My mentor, teacher, great embroidery designer...Kathy...has been helping me tremendously with getting it just right.  I want to show you what I have done so far.  Please feel free to leave your comments and let me know what you think...be honest...Kathy has been nothing but honest with me and I feel like I have made major improvements on the design...THANK YOU!...oh, and visit Kathy's website just to see what she does...she is AMAZING!

1st attempt...ok, hills are too tall, lack of color and too busy

2nd attempt, improvement - lacks color, too busy

3rd attempt, even better I think.  More color, less busy, still defined.  I do think by having less of an outline on the hills is better.  Be honest...let me know what you think of the stages...better, worse??? OH, I almost forgot to mention...there will be flowers on the hills, they will be seed beads and maybe sequins...so there will be even more color eventually.  See the watercolor below to get an idea of how pretty this will end up looking...the watercolor is the first attempt...I have another in the process right now with smaller hills.. There wont be lines going through the top part either...

I have been looking at books all week long...fun books as you can see.  I thought it would be fun to play with some clay today. I really like these beads I made with sculpy 3 clay.  They have a good sale going on at Joanns so I grabbed up several different colors.  Ive used polymer clay before but never really did a lot with it other than some stamping.  I bought this beautiful dress last weekend and needed a necklace to go along with it.  So this is what I came up with.  But I think I need more beads...lol

So, I mixed the blue and green together, the blue is metallic.  I layered the blue on the bottom, a thin layer of black on top, then a roll of translucent in the middle.  Wrapped the blue and black around the translucent and rolled it to a thinner cylinder.  Then I cut it in 5 strips, rolled them all together, cut them again in 5, rolled again...then cut it into 4 and rolled them together to get the look on the center log you see in this picture.  I used the scraps and sliced them up and rolled them all together into a bead as you see below the first picture.   I know its lousy instructions, but I thought I would share with you how I got the fun look. I need to make more with different colors.  I have more ideas...summer is almost here...I cant wait to create!

Before

After...see how cool they turned out!  I am so excited.