Snow moon *8

I was very hungry to do some bead embroidery.  I was interested in Lynn’s ocean and beach passion.  I wanted to add a little sparkle to Lynn’s Little Altar. 

I designed an ocean beach-to-horizon bead embroidery piece to use blues, shells, and several different stitches.  Blues are not normally colors I find easy to work with but this time I wasn’t uncomfortable. I wanted all kinds of bead embroidery textures.  But after the piece was about a third of the way finished, I decided that the design was not well balanced, and that the piece would feel heavy and overworked when it was finished. 

In the meantime, I’ve been studying about watercolors, and playing with photographs in Lightroom (a great program!).  I put some watercolor paper in the printer, printed a photograph.  I discovered how the printer inks (dye based) liquefy with a bit of water, and I tried adding watercolor to the photograph.  Pretty darn interesting!

So I decided to take another tack for my February project.  I found a photograph that I took several years ago and printed it on watercolor paper.  It was taken in January, at Ebey’s Landing on Whidbey Island, looking across to the Olympic Mountains.

I played with watercolor painting it to enhance the printed image and then sealed it with archival varnish. And like lots of things in life, when I was looking in one of my esoteric stashes of unfinished project ideas for some certain beads to add to it, I found these vintage two hole beads instead.  They inspired me in a different way, and I got to do some bead embroidery after all.  You might call it embellishment, but I’m calling it embroidery! 

I’m happy that this is a lighter, simpler, and more fanciful solution to my original desires for this month’s Little Altar spot.

 Nancy Strahle