Anatomy of a challenge

I've been working on my Vernal Visions Challenge piece for awhile now; it's actually a piece that I've been wanting to make for close to a year now.

There have been several reasons why I haven't made it before now; the main one being that I couldn't figure out how to do a critical part of it. This piece is inspired by the work of Faberge; he, of course, worked in gold and precious jewels, and I'm working in seed beads.

There is a difference.

I tried close to a hundred ways to make this tiny little component that inspired me, and failed miserably each time. I knew that I should be able to do it, but I just couldn't find a way to translate it into beads. Until recently. And the solution was so simple I nearly cried. All those complicated, crazy things I tried didn't work at all; and here it is in seven beads, done. In this piece, the challenging part isn't going to show in the final product; the challenge was finding the simple way to do it.

So now, with that problem solved, it took only a few tries to work out the rest of it. Now I know what to do, and how to do it; all that's left is the doing.

The part that shows is such a little bit of the work.