Shiny Sparkly Beads

Yum! Look at all the pretty shiny sparkly beads! These little sparklers require a good pair of reading glasses.

Beading has returned as an obsession.
 I never stopped caring about them, and beads find their way onto most of my quilts, but I had forgotten just how much I like peyote stitch. Now I am doing free form even count flat peyote instead of tubular. It has opened up a world to me creatively. Mainly because I can't follow someone's else's directions, so I make up my own path.
Much more satisfying.

Recently on vacation, while DH Drew was doing this...

That's my husband in blue on the SUP for the first time

 Cole and I were doing this...

I took along the beads I am using for my Geogia O'Keefe piece, but stopped in the local bead store, "just to look" and left with these little tiny squares and bugles of color. I spent the next few days playing with them to see how they behaved...

It is fun to just play with color, size, line, and finish in this format instead of painting or quilting.

I had prepared some baggies full of thread, needles, and beads but you know how stimulating new materials are!!

I haven't shown you any of the 8 pieces I've done so far. You can just see the start of some circular mandala's on the brown bag above. It's grown now into a beautiful piece. It will go on the Georgia o'Keefe  quilt along with a teensy painting I did a la her style.

I haven't wanted to be in the studio at the machine, so am enjoying summer and hand work. What about you?