Tuesday, April 15, 2008

May I get stuck?

I'm stuck on my May piece. I have about 2.5 inches done and I love it but I haven't decided what to do with the rest. I have an idea and maybe tomorrow I'll work on that and see if that will work.

Oh and btw, I posted all my pics to Flickr.

Saturday, April 12, 2008

May: The ending or the beginning?

From The Power of Myth:
The Serpent
The serpent has been a symbol of long life, healing, and knowledge among almost all cultures and religions since the beginning of recorded history.

The Ouroboros, also spelled Oroborus, Uroboros or Uroborus, is an ancient symbol depicting a serpent swallowing its own tail and forming a circle. The Ouroboros is one of the oldest mystical symbols on Earth. The serpent appears in Aztec, Chinese, and Native American mythologies, among others.


It's taken me a couple of days to brickstitch the snake. It's stitched on interfacing and sewn down on the regular fabric.

Now to figure out what to do in the center and the outside of the snake.

Ok, I decided to use a mirror for the snake to curl around.  Afterall this is my last piece for the year and the title is: Reflecting Knowledge.  I've gone full circle with the year.  I learned so much, I stretched my heart a lot letting some pieces of me come out in a visual and with words too!  Not to mention making myself sit down and finish each piece by the light of the Ott lamp.

I chose resin flowers for each corner, starting at the top left is colors that means summer to me.  The top right is fall, the bottom right is winter and the bottom left is spring.  

btw, the leaves you see in the mirror is of my wisteria.  I wish I would have taken the pic when it was in bloom but I didn't.  (drat)

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Month 11 and I've posted everything I have now

I finally posted all of my photos. Yay me. Took me long enough. New pics are Sept thru my April piece.

May: I haven't even started although I have a couple of ideas rolling around.

Thursday, April 3, 2008

Posted my drafts posts

I haven't been able to get outside to take photos of all my pages. Yesterday it rained, today has been overcast and I'm just a little too gimpy to get down the front stairs and do all 6 or 7 photographs. I'm resigned to ask my daughter to do it for me I think.

I blog every day, sometimes multiple times a day. Oh, not in this blog but my regular family blog. I decided some months ago to write by BJP entries but not publish them until we got a replacement cord for the camera. The entries are just not the same without the visuals. I also thought it would be fun to post a huge number of photos to the main BJP sort of like we did back in Sept.

So if you visit this blog you can scroll down and see the newly published (previously kept at draft status) but you probably won't see the photos until I can get my daughter to get her camera out and do it for me.

I really want to get it done because I really want to get my pages up on the new BJP website. It's beautiful and pretty impressive. Here is the fabulous front page of the official website.

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

April life of luxury

I've had a lot of dedicated beading time the last 3 days. Not having to go to work, using crutches to get around the house also helps me stay in mostly one place so I am beading like a madwoman. That's one benefit of having knee surgery.

The first day I began beading this piece I drew out my image. The next day I choose the colors (which also seem to be in some flux) and started in on the head. Now I've got the head and body mostly done, am working on the wings and then the tail.

Then the background. Sounds easy!

Off to bead some more and maybe start a new book (the 3rd since my surgery). See? I even have time to read, what a life of luxury!

p.s. Maybe tomorrow I can get all my pieces photographed and can finally publish all my drafts with pictures! That's a good goal.

8:20 p.m. Today I started working on the background of the piece: I want the bird to stand out from the background texturally. I auditioned a couple of different colors: I hated the blue pearly beads as background. So I tried a matte lavender, no that didn't work either. I wanted transparent blue but I only have about 5 grams and no way would it cover. Sooooooooooo, I decided that I'd use gold leaf.



I looked and looked for gold leaf this morning and couldn't find it. Grrrrr. I finally remembered where I last put it, yahooo victory! The gold leaf looks great but it's toooo shiny and overcompensates. I wracked my brain and decided I could use blue ink over the leaf to tone it down and give a skylike appearance. The problem? I don't have any blue ink! I used a gel pen, scribbling over the leaf (carefully) and yahooo, that works. But it tears pretty easily so on Sat I am going to see if I can get a ride to a craft store that carries ink. As soon as I apply it, I'll apply a finish to keep it stable and I'll be done with April! Yay.
I'm pretty happy right now, my April page is really going fast. Hahaha, probably because sitting around recooping from knee surgery makes it so I can't really go anywhere or do anything but sit around.