Frustration and Fun

Ugh!

What do you do when you are 80% finished with a project only to find out there is a HUGE issue?  I kept going.

Hindia plain brown wrapper

The problem is the beautiful cranberry beads are not color fast.

Losing color

You can see the color has rubbed off while I worked the bracelet. 

I was much too far along to tear it out and start over again.  I wanted to finish it.  Now I have to figure out what to do with it.  Hopefully, it will just look old and well loved.

I do like the shape. 

I did say use the word "fun" in the title.

If you want to test your eye for color, have an android phone, and like puzzle games I recommend you download Blendoku.  I downloaded it last night and played for way to long.  It appeals to the artist and puzzle player in me.  In the game you begin with one color and have to move the pieces to blend from the start color to the finish color.  This is a great way to learn about color.  There- I made a justification for playing a game. 

Beginnings

I have started a new project.  This one will be easy as I am using the Hindia tutorial I purchased from Studio 183 on Etsy.  I love this pattern.

To begin, here is my project tray:

Hindia project tray

I began by choosing the center base beads, which are not in any of the pictures.  They are a very pale pink rose quartz 6 mm bead. Despite the fact that they have been in my bead stash for well over 20 years they have been well used; they are quite versatile and will soon need to be restocked.  I think next time I will go a shade darker on the pink.

Getting to pink as a base color was a process of elimination. I use blue all the time and did not want to make something in blues again.  Black and white are wonderful, but did not fit for this particular project.  Green is one of my favorites, but for some reason it seemed to be over represented in my work.  I just finished a brightly colored piece so that ruled out oranges and yellows.  I always consider red, it really is my favorite, but I wasn't sure it would work in this piece because I did not know what other colors to use.  I decided on purple as it a popular choice, but I did not have enough of a choice in seed beads and embellishment beads to fit this project.  That left pink.

Once the pink was chosen I selected bronze and brass tones for balance, and just a touch of gold,  I picked plums and cranberries for additional color. 

Now, my project tray does not show much other than the tools that I start with, minus my magnifying light.  Here is an overall view of my bead choices:

Hindia bead choices

 

Here is a close up of the seed beads:

Hindia seed bead choices in 15, 11, and 8

The embellishment beads are here:

Hindia embellishment beads. 

The embellishment beads are pearls, size 15 charlottes in gold, pink amethyst onion cut briolettes, 4 mm amethyst rounds, and 4 mm swarovski bicones.

Gathering the intended beads only narrows down the choices, it does not end them.  I found that the pink swarovski bicones were too dark and I had no light pink 4 mm bicones.  (How did that happen with my huge bead stash???)  I substituted a brass cut bead that is almost a bicone.

Here is my work in progress:

Hindia work in Progress

In the end, I opted for the cranberry seed beads; they were just too alluring to set aside on this project.

Geek Update:
Way back when I started this blog I saved all my pictures in Flickr and then posted them here via a URL link.  I am still doing that.  However, I also had a widget in the side panel that showed my most recent flickr updates.  That widget stopped working quite a while ago but I missed it.  Today I found a substitute in the flickr badge. 

If you use flickr, search for flickr badge and click through the steps.  Then in Blogger choose layout and the html gadget and paste the badge text.

I am glad to have my most recent flickr photos available again on the side bar.