Stormy Weather

It's 4.30 am here.... Jerusalem is covered with snow!!!! Stormy weathers all around.... I've been tossing and turning for the last 40 minutes or so.... I just can't seem to stay asleep past 4 am lately.... ok, the fact that almost every part of my body aches and that I'm feeling like total crap doesn't help too much!!!.... but I just can't seem to sleep... so rather than toss and turn for the next 2 hours, I thought I would start sharing my next challenge piece for the EtsyBeadweavers.

This month's challenge is Stormy Weather, and the day I was ready to start dealing with this challenge is the day the weather looked like this....

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So, I quickly went out on my balcony armed with my decrepit yet still functioning digital camera and shot the sky... I do love looking at storms from the inside of a cosy warm room even though I much prefer bright blue skies :-)

There is something very romantic, dramatic and beautiful about storms... I started searching the web for images of the "eye of the storm".... just to get a feel for it.... so thanks to modern technology and the practicality of using a digital camera rather than my old SLR and having to spend hours in my darkroom (that is now the storage room for all my son's toys) to develop the film, I was able to start on my piece straight away... the palette of colours was pretty obvious.... I knew exactly what palette I'd be using and which beads!!! I bought these beautiful vintage 30 mm milky white cabochons from Bead Friendly on Etsy and I have to be really honest, but at first when I received them, I thought I lost my mind for buying them, although they were beautiful, I had absolutely no idea what-so-ever what I was going to do with them and even worried that I made a mistake by buying them..... well, less than 2 months later and I've already used one, have plans for the second one and want to buy more!!!

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I knew I had to use the cabochon so I started a bead-embroidered centrepiece. Here are some photos of this piece. The centrepiece is finished, I'm now working on the necklace part... I was having quite a bit of a problem with the necklace.... I envisioned exactly what I wanted to do but I just couldn't get it right with the size of beads that I wanted to use, so I went for the same idea using a completly different method... originally I was going to crochet the necklace, but now I'm using tubular Herringbone Stitch, the twisted kind... I'm sooooo but SOOO pleased with how it all turned out that it was worth the complete waste of day yesterday, while I started and restarted option after option till I got to deciding to go with the herringbone stitch. I really, really LOVE this piece... and yes I know that I probably get this enthusiastic at almost all the pieces I finish... I do fall in love with them.... but this one I really, REALLY LOVE!!! :-D

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First I glued the cabochon to some black beadbacking I bought from Beadwright on Etsy, then I peyote stitched round the cabochon in these gorgeous tiny milky white Japanese cylinder beads and I was already 100% sure that it would work!!!! The rest I embroidered around the focal cabochon with Japanese squares, Japanese and Czech seeds, "Venezia" seeds and tiny 3 mm firepolish multicut Czech glass beads in different shades of black and grey.... as I said, the result I LOVE!!!!! and the result is "Eye of the Storm".

Am still finishing off the herringbone twisted necklace and hopefully I should be able to do that by today and if it's early enough, and the weather clears up a bit (at the moment it looks a bit like the pictures above, but even darker and more menacing) I'll be able to take a photo of the finished piece and post it here..... so come back soon to see the finished piece!!! :-D