The Battle Begins

It's nearly the end of Day Two of working on my Battle of the Beadsmith 2013 piece, and this photo of my bead board at the end of the day is as much as I'm going to share right now. Yes, those are lots of little piles of size 15° beads; this is as close to making bead soup as I get.

I know, I know - other people mix colors together and work from a lovely mixed up pile, but not me. Not intentionally, anyway. If you look very carefully at the pile of pearl beads on the bottom right of the photo, you may be able to see that there are 2 or maybe even 3 shades of pearl beads in that pile; trust me, that was an accident that happened several years ago when I accidentally poured a pile of pearl beads into the wrong tube. I haven't been able to use that tube since; they're so close to the same shade, it's nearly impossible to sort them out. It turned into a fortuitous accident today; I wanted to give this piece an antique look, and I think that the mixed up tube of pearl beads accomplishes that. I hope you'll agree with me in 8 weeks when I can finally share it. 

See those little set stones on the bottom left? That's my nod to my metalsmith self. I'm calling this piece Rivers of Time, and I'm planning on adding as many elements from my life's journey to it as I can. So far, I've manipulated fabric, done a little bit of bead embroidery and lacy bead weaving, and set those stones. There will be more to it than that, but finishing what I've started so far is more than enough to keep me busy for quite awhile.