actual progress

I finished the bead work on Birds in the Mist

In this picture the beadwork (which has not yet been sealed or trimmed) is laying on the table with the frame I picked out to put it in

The idea is to carry the design of the beadwork right out onto the frame with paint or markers or colored pencils or something (I'm still working on that part)

It looks pretty neat --- even though I had to really scrounge to get enough of those dark blue beads to finish it up --- it took more of those than I realized it would to make the drastic change in the shape

So now I can spend some time doing some drawings to determine what I want to do on the frame


You may recall seeing that drawing on the left back when I originally did it.

I liked the little nibbling giraffe so well that I decided to try to cut a rubber stamp of it

There on the right at the bottom is the stamp that I cut --- at the top is what the image looks like when I stamp it

I'm really pleased with how this stamp came out, and I am seriously considering using it to stamp along both sides of the button band on a shirt I've been thinking about altering --

No, I'm not all that smart either that I could just draw the head on the rubber material and start cutting to get it right --- I used some software on my computer to take the scanned drawing and print it like a negative so I could remember which parts should be cut away and which parts needed to stay.

I like it a lot!

Work on the beaded balloon piece is also progressing --- my daughter has given it the title "Carried Away", which I really like. The DH is working on painting the plastic panel which will be in the back of the frame with transparent colors, and it's looking really good. Two of the four balloons (and their baskets) have been beaded --- ok, one of these days I'll remember to bring those to the computer and put them in the scanner so I can show you what they look like! Today I will start on the third balloon ---

If you've been reading here for a while you may recall these two pieces that I did early in the spring.

I had entered them in a competition sponsored by Fire Mountain Gems (a supplier that I use almost exclusively for many of my seed bead projects).

I knew that the acceptance date on the first round of the competition was May 30, but I figured the notifications would be email, and when I didn't hear anything for the first couple of days in June I just figured it was the usual stuff. (And frankly, I've been sort of caught up in the health issues this week and just wasn't thinking about it much.)

So I was totally stunned to reach in the mail box yesterday afternoon and find this letter from Fire Mountain telling me that not one, but both of my pieces had been accepted through the first round of the contest.

Now I have a questionaire to fill in about my work and each of the specific pieces and the pieces themselves go off to Oregon to be considered for the second level of the competition.

Uh, I'm still in shock! Being pretty used to "throwing stuff against the wall" and having it just rain back on me, when something finally "stuck" I'm not exactly sure how to react.

Wow!

Anyway, in the next couple of days the DH will bring in the cases so I can retrieve the pieces and I'll be working on the questionaire.

unbelievable!!