♥ Valentine's ♥ Heart ♥ for my Honey ♥

I'm a member of ABeadStory a group my friends Cyn & Dot created for those of us who love to bead embroider.

The challenge for this month was of course a Heart & so I started with the thought that my heart would be in a frame like my BJP Under The Sea series.  I was wrong ;)

As I sat beading the other day, Joe sat down & started cutting up an old pair of jeans which he'd finally admitted had too many holes - he uses them for rags out in his shed.  He came over & put the small coin pocket on my beading table.  As I beaded on my heart, the tiny pocket caused my Muse to get excited, so we (my Muse & I) went & got the back of the jeans & picked the pockets off them. 

The heart is embroidered on fabric that I backed with several heart shape layers of  felt to give it shape. I started with a heart shaped piece of Paua Shell from New Zealand, which glued on before I beaded around it.  I used mainly matt black czech 11s along with a variety of sizes & finishes in black, to create texture along with a sprinkling of red & blue/green to spice up the black.  There's some Hematite too, to add good energy to the heart.   I cut a slightly larger heart from red fabric & stitched both to the pocket, poking a little fiberfill behind them before I finished sewing them down. 

Red embroidery thread & a few tiny flower beads topped with sparkly red beads finished this off.  I used cardboard covered with denim  to back the pocket & used copper wire & beads to make a funky hanger for my ♥valentine♥ for my honey♥

Joe loves it ♥♥

I do love it when my Muse takes over because then I really bead outside the box!!

The Beaded Rock - the timely end of a UFO

I am not going to admit how long this has been sitting around as a UFO but it has been a while & some of my friends may have seen it in person at a certain event here at the beach ;)

It began life as a 2.5"x 2" rock which I beaded over using peyote stitch & then the fun began, making tiny sea anemones.. I added lots of embellishment using tiny shells, pearls, drop beads & lots of tiny fringe/stacks.

I have taken pohots from all angles so you can see all the fun details..

FULL FRONTAL
FROM THE RIGHT

FROM THE LEFT

BACK SIDE

FROM ABOVE

I hope you enjoy this piece, it sure was fun to make even if it did take me a long time to finish LOL

Sea Shells

Final page for the 2007 -2008 BJP

This one took some doing, as I posted earlier I had done a Paua shell planning to use it for the month of May BUT it was too big for the frames I have, so it was back to the drawing board.

I had a block as far as what to do for my last page & with it being summer I ended up spending lots of time in the garden & avoided my beading table because of my lack of ideas - yeah don't ya hate these empty spaces when it comes to beading ideas LOL

I did all kinds of things to avoid beading, even cleaning up my craft room, which looked like a tornado had hit it & in doing so, I found some delightful fabric I had got while down in New Zealand earlier this year. It featured a Paua shell along with a Mussel & a Kina or Sea Urchin & another shell in colour with the rest of the shells in sepia colours. I embroidered the 4 coloured shells & this is the result

I have to say it is not my favorite of this series but hey I still think it rocks so that's what counts, right?

I still don't know why my pictures won't open to full size but you can check out a larger picture here

April Under the Sea BJP

One more page done for my Beaded Journal Project, this time it is a Green Turtle diving through the clear ocean waters for some tasty morsles that inhabit the coral reef.

I still have a couple to do to finish the whole year but I'm working at getting them done ASAP

You can see a larger picture of this one here

Under the Sea BJP for March

I have finished another page for the Beaded Journal project, this was another fun piece to work on

As usual I cannot get my pictures to open so you can see a bigger picture here

February BJP finished

I have to thank the Lone Beader for this one, as her style of bead embroidery inspired me to try something similar. I used layers of felt to make the Mermaid & the fish stand out from the background fabric..




Here are a couple of progress pictures so you can see what I did, the top side of the Mermaid is about a 1/4 " thick and the lower side is flat, so hopefully I have achieved a 3D effect with her & the fish..



I'm not sure about the face of the mermaid but hey she does have a great head of hair LOL

Her tail is ruffled with sculptural bead weaving, this last picture is the most true to life colour I think.... Now onto the next one

You can see this picture enlarged at my webshots allbums as my pictures still won't open to larger images even tho they are HUGE :(

http://good-times.webshots.com/photo/2995530400063161327oyswoK