Yellow Sunflower Cuff

Last weekend I needed a pick me up from all the snow that is now piled up around me.

I've had this beautiful yellow flower cabochon from Lisa Peters Art. This cabochon reminded me of the sunflowers we grow each summer. However, yellow is a really difficult color for me to incorporate into my pieces so this beautiful cabochon has been waiting to be used. I pulled out my trusty color wheel and decided to pair the yellow cabochon with purple. The color combination provided me with that color pick me up.

I decided to embroider the yellow cabochon with bronze seed beads. I wanted to mimic the feel of flower petals so I added the two rows of fringe beads in bronze and rainbow opaque. The centerpiece is attached to a metal cuff that was covered with genuine purple leather. The underside of the cuff is lined with lavender ultrasuede. You can see more pictures of the cuff here.

If you'd like to see more of Lisa's work, you can find more of her lovely beads, buttons, and cabochons here.

Tiny Flower Earrings

Since, I've obviously been focused on flowers the last few days, I decided to relist my Tiny Flower Earrings on Etsy. These adorable earrings are perfect for any occasion. Two glass flower beads are surrounded by seed beads and hang from sterling silver ear wires. The earrings are backed in black ultrasuede. These bead embroidered earrings are so light weight, you won't even know your wearing them.

Color Inspiration

Nature is a great source of inspiration. Right now I can take a quick little stroll and see so many colors, shapes, and textures. Today was no exception. Our gardens and field are filled with so much color right now, it's hard not to find something to spark a new idea. I thought I'd share some color inspiration with you. 

Where do you find inspiration?

 

The Wonderful World of Wildflowers

Yesterday was a really odd day. Raining when we woke up, then cloudy, and then the sun poked its head out from behind the clouds. My oldest daughter and I decided to take a walk. It seems that in the last week all the wildflowers just took hold of our fields. We headed down the back road, dogs leading the way. We got to the top of the hill with only a few flowers in hand and the thunder started to roll. We decided to take the turn to the tree house just in case we needed to seek shelter, which we did. Fortunately not for very long, because it is not fun to be in the tree house with 2 German Shepards in a thunder storm. The brief showers passed and we continued picking as we went along. We returned with this lovely bouquet. We found Queen Anne's Lace, Butterfly Milkweed, daisies, purple clover, and a bunch of others that I don't know the names. 

Tiger Lilies

This past weekend the tiger lilies bloomed. They are everywhere. We have a line that surrounds our small garden near our house, but you can see them everywhere along the roads right now too. 

Orange and yellow are not at the top of my list of favorite colors, but I can't deny that these are beautiful flowers. I now feel challenged to try beading something using the same color combination as these lilies. I find yellow a really difficult color to work with in beading. I'm sure that is because it is not one of my favorite colors, but I also struggle to figure out how to complement it with other colors. I took a few moments over the weekend to study these flowers and I'm warming to the idea of yellow and orange. Maybe it is the deep red that separates the two. I have a few other projects in the works, but my head is now filled with a number of ideas. Oh, only to have more time to bead.

Is there a color that you find hard to incorporate? Have you been able to overcome it?

More Purple Inspiration

I'm hard at work finishing the cuff, but I wanted to share a few photos of the irises that are blooming near our house. They are an wonderful shade of purple with hints of blue. I love the little yellow hairs that grow from the center of the petals and the purple veins that meet them.

Iris is a genus of between 200-300 species of flowering plants. Iris comes from the greek work for rainbow. I believe this type maybe a bearded iris, but I'm not sure. Never the less, they are lovely.

Pursing Purple

These lovely flowers are blooming all over our property. I have no idea what they are, but I love them. We also have these incredible purple irises that just opened the other day. The thing is that I feel like I am surrounded by purple flowers right now. It makes sense that my newest project would use purple as the primary color.

After the road trip and spending Memorial Day weekend planting the vegetable garden, I finally got to do some beading. 

As I mentioned in a previous post my next project was going to be a cuff.  I decided to use an oval purple cat's eye cabochon as the centerpiece. I've used 4 sizes of seed beads, bugle beads, pearls, pewter beads, and glass beads to embellish the cuff. The cuff is primarily shades of purple with hints of silver, gray, and reds. Whenever I use a lot of different beads, the end result always reminds me of a crazy quilt.  

P.S. If you know what the flowers (picture above) are, please let me know. Thanks.