In last Wednesday’s blog piece, Horizons 2010, I introduced you to may latest Masterwork in progress, Oceana by way of a faint sketch in pencil. Of course in my head it’s completely finished but before I can show you that, I have to do the weaving of teeny tiny beads and a few other components. Of course I love to have choices and so I pulled out a much larger variety of beads than I’ll probably use.

The Many Beads and a Cabachon that Might Be Used in Oceana

The small tubes on the right contain very tiny 15/0 seed beads, in the center are tubes of slightly larger 11/0 seed beads and there are bags of 5/0 Japanese triagle beads, some 8/0 seed beads, more 11/0 seed beads and three sizes of bugle beads (these are the ones that look like long tubes). There are also small freshwater pearls in their own bags, and larger dyed freshwater pearls and a sodalite cabochon which will be part of the embellishment.

Sodalite Cab and Dyed Freshwater Pearls

The sodalite cabochon is especially important to me as it is one of the stones I polished while I was still a young woman living at home. My father really enjoyed trying new things and one of his hobbies was rocks and minerals and he had built a small polishing stand in the cellar (near his darkroom so water could be run to it as well). I have a few small stones left and lots of rough. Sadly, I have neither the time nor, any longer, the cabbing machine.

Next step: start beading the bezel around the cabochon.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 13th, 2010 at 5:29 PM and is filed under Artist at Work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.