Love That Muse!

At Bead Fest I had the good fortune to meet (and buy a bead from) an artist whose work I've long admired: Kerri Fuhr. Her beads are meticulously detailed, and have a delicate aesthetic which to me is almost Victorian.

I bought one of her tapestry beads, and knew I wanted to do something that somehow mirrored both the organic botanical nature of the design (it is decorated with tendrils and vines and leaves), as well as the intricate detail.

After making two small leaves, I had a bit of an orgy of false starts, resulting in a serious bout of Cutting Up (which has its own satisfaction sometimes, but not when there's so much of it). Finally I seem to have hit my stride.

This necklace will be completely asymmetric, with beaded beads forming one half, while the other half will be some sort of dimensional spiralling rope. Probably. I'm loving the peacock pearls which are such a perfect addition to the reactive glass with which she has decorated the bead - the rainbow of soft blue-greys through green-greys are delightfully reflected in the rainbow iridescence of the pearls.

I'm having a grand time without the spectre of More Kits, More Samples hanging over my head, though in truth there is another ghostly presence: more Items For Sale, since I have two home sales, six days apart, in a little more than a month.

To that end, a pair of earrings in leopard-skin jasper and pearls.

It's a start.

In other news, it's taken me almost a full week to make a dent in the catching up on sleep thing, for which I have no excuse besides my inability to stay asleep until the alarm goes off. (You may have been thinking that for almost a full week of Not Preparing for Bead Fest I'd have managed a little more in terms of production, and you'd have been right, were I not so tired and therefore brain dead. Ish).

Instead I've been listing kits in my Etsy store, since (as has been previously mentioned), I had to insure against the possibility of running out of anything at all, kit-wise: I have some kits left over from Bead Fest. If you want to be among the first to know, join my group on Yahoo - I send out a notice every time I list a new kit or pattern.

Still a few to go. I plan on having everything up by the time I go to bed tomorrow night.