Flat Top Casket Progress

A new Love....

 I really love working on my casket~ I wish I could work on it all day, and some of the night, every day & night! It really is that enjoyable for me. Stumpwork is the ultimate puzzle in my opinion~ one has to figure out how to make realistic (or not) representations of what we have seen in the world~ what part needs to be made first....what stitches one will use...what colors one will use~ forget trying to work a 3 page calculus problem to give you brain a workout...just try and figure out how to make a squirrel out of beads! I was quite happy with my squirrel...and then I worked this flower....y...u...k...!

Just didnt like it. nope. not at all. The technique I used for the petals, specifically beading the wire around the outside edge of each, really made it more bold looking that I wanted~and I didnt like the inside section of petals....the three pinks looked like good gradations of each other in the pots, but on the flower~ nope, didnt like it. And then there is that stem. ::sigh:: 

I wanted to incorporate some 'plain' opaque beads in the design, and really liked this color of green....but eeeeewwwwww...not on this flower!  So....don't be afraid to unpick what took you hours and hours of work to do in the first place in order to fix a problem early on....instead of getting so far along otherwise you decide you can just live with it....and end up hating looking at the thing because it drives you crazy! This flower drove me insane, so out it came along with that nasty, hideous stem.

 This is the rose with center petals unpicked...and of coarse all my flowers have a happy little bee hovering on a wire overhead!

 For the reworked stem I went with a dark green that matched the part of the mound it was sprouting forth out of, and with the leaf added, yes, I like it now!

I left this one a little large so you can see the details~ this is one completed side frieze~ YAY!

 My other side frieze had two animals planned, along with another rose and two snails. At first, I admit the animals were a bit of a hurdle...they gave me a little anxiety as when I designed my casket, I designed what I liked, and paid no matter what so ever as to how I was ever going to work them. Once I made the squirrel tho,  they werent so scary and I jumped right in with the dog first. He has a blue glass eye, separate eyelid, whiskers, collar, ears and tail. His tail is tubular twilling and when I had finished him in my hand, if I pushed on his tummy, his tail would wag and Oh my GOLLY! was it ever cute! For a little while I thought about how I could make it wag on my panel/casket...but I decided I had enough going on to have to worry about his tail wagging....and the last thing I want to see, is a bunch of outstretched fingers wanting to push on every animal on my casket to see if it moves.

 Bunny came next, and here I took the opportunity to try out a color scheme I want to use on my unicorns on the back panel. He has no tail yet in this picture, but its a great view of his ears~

And alas, with this last side panel ~ all of my friezes are now complete! I am quite busy with work so it may be some time before I am able to work on my casket again....until then, I bead all night in my dreams, figuring out colors and stitches to use...when I ever get to it!