Where this necklace came from part one

It was funny last night I was looking for something new to tell you all about.  As always I turn to this awesome group of women of the AJE team to inspire me.  Being the only seed beader sometimes makes me feel a bit limited to what I can offer but once again they let me know there is still more mystery that I think.  Funny how we all look at someone else's art as so amazing and the process in getting there is so fascinating but when we look at our own art we do not consider those things.  I have so many works in progress but I am particularly fond of the process that I went through with this piece.

In July of last year I had just barely begun my journey with the AJE team and the desire to make something special was on my mind.  This is what Jennifer had sent us.

WOW I was so amazed with this bead.  Not only the beauty and out of the box look of it but the story behind it. 

 My 10 year old daughter, who turns 11 in July, inspired this series. The first time I made one of these, it was 4 years ago in the midst of a particularly bad spell of nightmares for her. Every single night she would wake up screaming and end up crawling in bed with us, plastered against me...elbowing, kicking, tossing and turning. Plus I would be sweating because I was crammed in between her and hubs. This means I really wasn't getting much sleep.One night, as I was torching, I was stewing about this particular issue, and suddenly my beads started growing these stylized spider end caps thingys on them before I realized what was going on. The next morning when I showed my lovely daughter, she responded with "that's really mean that you made those because of my nightmare, but also really cool." I continue to make them even though she no longer wakes up screaming about spiders or crawls into bed with us

So with the story and the bead in hand I looked through my stash.  Now I have to remind you that I was still new in the stash building and very budget constrained.  My stash is what I had to work with.  That is not always the worst thing I have to tell you.  Sometimes the best ideas come from using what you have and not having the ability to go shopping for the perfect accents.

I always start with the colors of the bead or component itself.  They speak to me.  I try to listen because if I force it then it just stops the process altogether and failure is eminent.  I also like to make things that match a particular shirt.  With that I choose from my stash the green, black and hematite seeds.  Now that is a process in itself.  Just like glazes, glass or patinas seeds have a mind of their own.  What you see in the tube is not always what they look like next to the bead.  Looking for the perfect blend is not always easy.

As you can see from the picture the greens were the hardest to choose from.  I narrowed it down to the three you see here and then really looked at the colors in the bead to see which one would accent perfectly.  I do have to take some of each color out of the tubes because they react differently when they are in small groups.

Once I make that decision it is time to see what exactly what type of chain will enhance the component I am working with.  Will it be a just a bead woven chain like this one I did with Karen's COM back in February?

But this one.  It needed more.  Well as luck would have it I was able to stop by Michael's and found some really awesome accents that begged to come home with me.

So in my next post I will show where it went from here.  What do you think so far?  Is this a similar process that you use in your art?

Kristen