BEAD PALS SHAPE CHALLENGE

Allrighty, I am back online.  Luckily, I don't have any sad story about the death, illness, or disaster that has kept me from blogging.  I was just busy with some beading deadlines and 2 fun classes.

Remember last year when I posted a photo of the diamond shapes that I made for the Bead Pals 4th challenge?  The guidelines were that we had to make a geometric shape in jewel-toned colors that measured 2 inches or less.   My entry was the 23 diamonds below--1 for each person in the challenge. 

Diamond shapes for Bead Pals shapes challenge

We sent out shapes off to the organizers and eventually each participant received 23 shapes to play with.  The photo below shows the selection I received.

The various shapes

Now the challenge was to make something with the shapes.  I played around with combinations but nothing really resonated until I remembered a fun game that some of us had played on Facebook.  We posted photos of what was on our beading board and I made a face of my projects. 

My photo for the What's on Your Beading Board game

 Hmm...could I make a face using the geometric shapes?  Here is the result of my bead embroidery experiment.

The finished face

I glued the shapes down to interfacing but then found that I would have to sew them down as well.  Then I added rows of seed beads to fill in the space in between.  I had planned to cut out the face and mount it on something else but a) I ran out of time and b) it would have been very difficult to so.  My desperate solution was to paint the backing with acrylic paint.  The color could be a little lighter but, after 3 tries (another learning experience), I decided to leave well-enough alone.

Diane Fitzgerald put together a fun booklet of the finished beadwork and will be posting it on her website at some point. It was fun to see how everyone had approached the shapes in a different way.  In the meantime, you can check out the booklets for previous challenges at Diane Fitzgerald. 

Now to make 22 embellished found objects.