Making progress

Hello everyone, and welcome this snowy day!  I'm so happy you could join me.  It is snowing again, but they are assuring us it's not going to amount to much.  For those of us in the Mid-Atlantic this winter is going on forever!!  The weekend was beautiful and I was able to get out into my garden and prune the roses and clean up some of the flower beds.  My hellebores and crocuses are starting to bloom and that makes me very happy.  Now if we could just warm up and stay that way!  But, enough of the complaining about the weather (which gets you nowhere!) and on to the title of this post.

I don't make resolutions at the New Year but I do try to set some realistic goals for myself.  This year it was to finish projects that have been sitting around in various states of completion.  Of course, I had to weed out the ones that made me say "What was I thinking?" and keep the ones I still really liked and wanted to finish!  After that exercise was done I decided to do one a month to keep to my realistic timeline and not try to finish everything in two weeks as I'm inclined to do once I decide to do something!  In January I finished a little paper art project that was from a technique class I took over a year ago with Wendy Vecchi.  This month it was to finish a lariat I had started about two years ago.  This is the finished necklace.

 

 

While I like to design as I go, this was a compilation of patterns from other bead artists.  It started out as a way to use a beaded ring that was a Cynthia Rutledge design.  I decided to use it as the ring end of a lariat.  Of course, then I needed a lariat!  I was just going to bead a spiral rope using some beads from the ring but then I saw this lariat pattern in  Kelly Wiese's book,  Beaded Allure.  I liked the seed beaded stitch pattern and the fringe that used silver as well as beads.  So, using the colors that I had used in the ring, an unusual color combination for me, I stitched the lariat and then the fringe. 

 

 

 

 

 

While the green is a color I use a lot, the blue pearls and golden accent beads are not go to colors for me.  But, I guess I was in a mood to change things up the day I stitched the ring!! It was fun to stitch and I found blue seed beads with a green iris finish to stitch the lariat.   Of course, the fringe was my favorite part of the necklace.  Here's a picture of it.

 

 









 

I love stitching fringe and I use lots of different beads to create pattern and interest in it.  The original fringe from the pattern used silver beads, bead caps and spacers and I kept that part of the design.  From there I added crystals bicones and shaped beads, fire polished beads, seed beads, Hill Tribe bead caps and a few vintage beads.  Its a nice long fringe which adds to the drape of the necklace.  

 

 I feel so pleased to have been able to finish a lariat that I really like and to have been able to put those beads away after a long time sitting on my work table!!  On to project 3!!!

 

Thank you so much for visiting with me today!  I love all your comments and appreciate your visits so much.  I hope you have a wonderful day.