Bead Journal Project May

I actually finished this just after the end of May but it was inevitable that I would fall at least slightly behind at some stage!

This was a lot more planned than April's and I actually think I prefer the more spontaneous look.  Though I am pleased with this, certainly.

The face is such a pretty, delicate one (from my collection bought from various vendors, sorry I can't acknowledge your beautiful work) that I wanted to use a similarly delicate found object with it.  And not to biuld up beads around the face like I usually do, but just to do one round.  the found object is a piece of fine wire that I found lying around that I twisted randomly.  When I had finished I decided that it looked vaguely like dragonfly wings and I thought of the creature from Pan's Labyrinth and that sort of informed what I was making.

It is finished with the usual encrusted edge. 

Not a very exciting picture!

But that's because this is my May Bead Journal Project piece, and it is almost finished, and I don't want to show it off properly until it IS finished!!

So this is what I am working on tonight :)

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Bead Journal Project - April

I didn't quite ex[ect to finish my April piece by the end of the month, because of the house move, but I did manage to do so with a couple of days to spare.

I deliberately kept it very simple this month with no bead patterns or anything, just a bead soup embroidered around a striking image.  This time, while sticking to the Faces and Found Objects theme I had set myself, I mixed things around a bit.  The Found Object is the Face!  It is a button that I have had in the stash for a couple of years.  The 'body' is a piece of polymer clay left over from an experiment, so it is also a found object of sorts.

It is finished with the usual encrusted edge.

Bead Journal Project - March

For a start, this is a close-up of the face cab I used in my February post.  I 've only just got round to taking a halfway decent picture of it.  I'm not very good at close-ups.

Now for the March piece.  It really is this blue.  The polymer clay face cab came from a lot I bought on Ebay, I think, but as with all of them, too long ago to be able to acknowledge the artist properly.    The found object this month is, quite literally, something I found on the floor.  I have no idea how it came to be in my house, I'd never seen it before!  It is a millefiore-style glass button, cut on an angle, and it matched the face so beautifully that I just had to use it.  I love blue so I had lots of blue beads in the stash, in fact many more than I could sensibly use in an ATC sized piece.

It is finished with my usual encrusted edge.

Next month is going to be slightly different - still a face and a found object, but slightly different!

Bead Journal Project February

I finished my BJP for February about halfway through the month, but haven't got round to blogging about it yet.

The face is yet another from a job lot I bought off Ebay, quite an attractive one I thought.  The found object has a history, this time - this piece of twisted wire, along with another one, were among my late father's effects.  I have no idea if he had intended to do anything with them but they have obviously been manipulated quite deliberately and I love the organic quality of the shape.  It went well with the face.

I chose a mostly green palette, including one mixture that included cream, purple, pink and mauve as well.  They went with the browns of the face and the copper wire.  This 'design' is a lot more organic than January's, because of the way the face and the wire spoke to me.

Again it is ATC size, 2 1/2 X 3 1/2 inches, done on Lacy's Stiff Stuff and backed with ultrasuede.  I used my 'signature' encrusted beading edge again.

I haven't started March's yet, because I am about 2/3 of the way through crocheting what will become a felted bag and I want to get that out of the way, but I have chosen the face cab and the found object and the colours and I'm raring to go.  Next week, hopefully!

Bead Journal Project - January

I am rather pleased with myself. I;ve tried to do the BJP twice before - the first time I lasted four or five months, the second time I gave up almost immediately. But this time I am no longer studying so I think this will be the perfect year for it!

I am however hoping to return to full-time work soon (job-hunting is busily underway) so I decided to work on a small scale to ensure that I didn't get bogged down. I've chosen to do densely beaded ACT size pieces. After some idle thinking I decided I wanted to base them all around faces, as I have a box full of assorted face cabachons that I have collected from various online sellers that were just crying out to get out of that box! And once I had started, the thought came to me of Face and Found Objects.

January uses a face from a collection of grotesques that I bought when I was doing my final exhibition pieces for my Diploma of Studio Stitch Textiles.  I used some to create a piece inspired by The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, in which the design was based to some extent on the sets for the movie, which were rather distinctively Art Deco.  I decided to use one of these grotesque faces for my January piece, and beaded around it in similar colours and shapes to those I used for that exhibition piece.

The Found Object part of it came to me while I had already started, and I must admit that the button I used was, quite literally, the first 'found object' that I 'found' after making the decision - it was lying around on the table I keep the television on.  I decided that I would not make a big thing out of the found objects for my pieces - I will choose the face carefully but the found object has to come serendipitously.  The button in this one looks like it has come off a man's shirt but has no specific meaning to me.  It could have fallen off one of George's shirts, or just been one of the many and varied stash buttons that I organised recently.

I have included the not very interesting picture of the back to show off my crusted beading edge.  I have tried quite a lot of beaded edges but I always come back to this one, which is both the easiest and, in my opinion, the most opulent.  Plus it has the great virtue of being so flexible that you can cover up unevenness in the original embroidery and no-one is any the wiser!

I did the front on a piece of Lacy's Stiff Stuff slightly coloured with watercolour pencils in shades to match the beads, just in case anything showed through, and backed it with a piece of complementary Ultrasuede.