Bead Hoarding is an Addiction, it sits right up there with Bead Shopping! Of course you need to go shopping first, then the hoarding kicks in. There are two types of hoarders, the organised type and the dis-organised type. I am, of course, completely organised...NOT! My bead hoard is spread out everywhere! Although, mercifully it didn't take very long for me to find the subject of this challenge. What took the longest was trying to find the brass jump rings and tiger tail. Still looking!
Lori Anderson of the Bead Soup Blog Party has given out a challenge. Dip onto our hoard of beads and just make something. Well, there were lots of decisions to make - what would I use, what shall I make, can I really bear to part with this or that? I ended up chosing one of my earliest hoardings and coincidentally the most expensive (curse you eBay!).
Quite a few years ago I attended a polymer clay workshop taught by Christie Friesen. During the workshop I made a bird brooch by following the steps in the Birds of a feather book, we were also introduced to some steampunk designs. A short while later Christie was having a sale on eBay, selling the pieces she made while creating the book Steampunkery. Well I couldn't help myself I just had to have my own steampunk dragonfly. I'm not sure if it's the one on the cover or made to photograph the instructions but it's a CF original and I'm happy about that.
I knew I was going to have to do something with it someday, but I kept putting it off. I did however start a bead soup that I could use when I decided what I wanted to make. Earthy toned seed beads, freshwater pearls, brass beads and a few czech firepolished beads strung up and woven through the chain and sari silk to add just a bit of interest. The real stumbling block was the location of the holes in the wings. I'm not 100% happy with the setup of the chain at the moment, I may still tweak it.
What really surprised me was the green (likes more yellow in the first photo) sari silk. As you can see its quite frayed and organic looking, I had pictured a deep earthy purple but ended up using the green instead.
For a full list of participants please visit Lori
