works in progress

As I mentioned a couple weeks ago, I've been working on some more ambitious beading projects lately.  It's not even that they're more difficult most of the work that I do, but they're more time consuming.  I have a ton of inventory to list already and want to focus on some bigger projects that I've been planning for a while.

I got the red and blue flower beads over a year ago.  (I have way more than what I put in the shot above.)  When I had them out with a bunch of other new beads, they ended up next to these espresso bean delicas.  I decided that they would make a perfect base.  So far I'm still confident that this will work well.  But I grossly underestimated the number of delicas that I would need.  I got a couple more bags from Art Beads this week.  Let me know what you think of the button I have paired with it in this picture.  I think it would be neat to use something slightly metallic without going too shiny.

Also, I've been promising to take a picture of my current cross-stitch piece in progress, and here it is.

There has been some confusion from people who glance quickly and think that it's Santa.  It's not.  It's a wizard.  I'm always amazed how much detail you can see without any of the back stitching or other final embellishment.  I have my cross-stitch on our newly decorated table in our living room.  Our living room and kitchen are all one big connected area and the table is in the living room.  For the last couple years, it has mostly looked like this.  I finally packed the castle up this week and put a table cloth, place mats, napkins, and candles on it.  Jake couldn't believe the difference.  I'll have a shot up sometime when I post my final condo organization shots before/around when we sell our place.

Finally, this is the view that I see through my camera when I set it down next to my light box.  I got inspired to take a picture of it over the weekend.