Is it really October???Already???

Squeezing in some me time...

  Everyone keeps asking me what I'm working on...and truth is, I dont have hardly any time to work on anything for me. I am busy as ever working up not one or two but three new classes, new boxes and needlework tools and dollys for Christmas~ along with painting slate frames, sculpting stumpwork figures and being the endless chauffeur to a bottomless pit of never ending school activities. So I have to make time for me...which is squeezing in a few hours on a Sunday, or a few minutes before bed to work a leaf or something....After I got back from the U.K. when I was digging thru my endless stacks of notebooks that keep track of different things, I found the one for my flat top casket and...really?  The last time I worked on it was in January? seriously???  Well that was just a pathetic realization....that if your not aware, time will just leave you in the dust.  

All the panels for my casket sit on their own little table in the gallery. They look like little ghosts under their dust covers. Its super hard to decide which panel to work on, as I had finished all of the friezes, so now I have to start from the beginning on a panel....to keep the choice easy, I picked the frame that didnt have any work done on it yet, which was the lid.  Since I won this casket in the Beaded Basket competition, I thought it fitting to work an allegory of Lady Victory in a central cartouche , surrounded by angels of coarse....and a few bugs. There is so much detail packed into this little roundel, I have had to dig out my smallest of smallest little weensie beads. The castle could fit on my thumbnail....

Little dragonfly has peacock feathers worked into his body, and I have his gossamer beaded wings complete...but set aside in a parts bag to be put on last after all the beadwork is finished.

In a weekend I got most of the background completed~a little cloud, bird, hills and water....I only have the leaves on the one tree to work, then I will be able to start the fun three dimensional parts. Ladye is patiently waiting to be dressed.....  because she is just a bust, I was able to sculpt her a little larger than most figures, and so used a precious pair of antique 18thc blue glass eyes. I cant wait to see her finished!

 I know I have to work the inside first before starting the outside, but that doesnt keep my mind from wandering and all the while I am stitching, I am thinking about how I will work the roundel....what colors of beads I will use, that sort of thing. I made  little practice padding and trial of these colors....havent decided yet if I like it or not.