One of the little langniappes we got at Gathering was the bead tied to our bookbags, in which we received our registration packets, and were held to be useful for carrying notes, tools, and purchases during the conference. These quick little beads, made by local volunteers would often be based on the year's theme, so the year they used a spiral, the bead tied on that year's bookbag was a flat tab decorated with one.
The tab off by itself to the left measures 19mm hole to hole; the round, 16mm. Bullseye, oct 2008. Pressed and/or hollow beads.
Recently the wizard purchased 4 reuseable grocery bags from our local department store, Meijers, which also has decent produce at good prices; and I thought making beads to tie onto our bags, to make it immediately obvious that they belonged to us (and not, say, another customer, or worse yet, the store) would be fun. The bags are royal blue with a lime green leaf design (to show ecological aspect, I suppose) and white printing, so I banged out these 4 beads to match.
I selected Bullseye because their opalescents have a slightly translucent look that I thought would co-ordinate better with the slightly velvety look for the fabric (some sort of tyvek, perhaps? It's woven, and has a slight, interesting texture to it, at any rate.) The one off by itself was the first effort, and the best example of a pressed bead of those attempts (I am slowly getting better at pressed hollows;) but the design struck me as clunky. I tried casing the lime green in transparent green to make it a little more lively, even though that meant I lost the flat graphic quality I kinda wanted, to match the flatness of the printing.
I soon dropped the swirling white trailing and substituted a triplet of marvered dots instead with heart shaped leaves. —Perhaps adding a stem would be the next logical move to re-introduce some linearity and flow to the decorations, but I only needed four and was determined not to make 10 and then have 6 fuglies I didn't know what to do with.
So you see, even quite a basic design, with very simple elements, still needed some samples to work out my ideas—I'm guessing, by around 10 or 12 I'd probably have a decent concept. Alas, these abortive efforts will just have to serve...
photographs, file 17oct08
Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.
