My Flat Top Casket Progress

Working Thru....

  I havent posted any progress on my flat top casket for a while because well, there hasn't been much progress to share. I was working on the angels when my Biskie got hit by a car, and I have felt so much guilt that he should not even have been outside  ect ect...that it has been very difficult for me to even look at the angels, let alone work on them. A few minutes was all I could muster before I would get overwhelmed and need to go do something else. I have dreaded working on them....not to mention, the what seemed like zillions of feathers were terrifically boring and they just kept going on forever and ever. 

 I would make a couple of feathers, put them on...make a few more~ they are all different sizes to fit the drawing I made. Once they were on, angel finally got her hair....because I had to work the hair before I could put the head of the wings on

  Once hair was sufficiently full and flowing, I added the head of the wings to cover the bottoms of the feathers. At this point I was still dreading every bead, knowing that I had a whole second angel to work

 This was the angel I was working on at the time, so I have left a gap in her feathers, a missing one, for my precious lil guy. When I finished her feathers, I was anxious to work her hair and finish her wigs so I could just be done with them, finally.

I have a ton of work to do getting ready for next years Bath Textile Summer School, (I will be teaching two classes), so my thought train was as soon as I finished the angels, the cover was going over this panel for a while. I knew if I didnt make myself finish the angels, 10 years from now they would still be unfinished...but something unexpected happened when I got second angel done. It was like a huge weight was lifted off my shoulders, and looking at my lid panel...I was excited again. There's not that much left on it actually...

 Suddenly I found myself madly pawing thru my beads looking for colors for the two large roses at the bottom of the panel, and before I knew it, I had chose two sets of colors and was enjoying trying to figure out which ones to use. My son suggested this red, which I liked, but didnt have enough beads of that color, so this petal got unpicked and I went with shades of pink to match the roses in the friezes.

Yesterday I finished one of the roses and yes, I am excited for this panel again! One more rose like this, a garland and the cartouche border and thats it~ I already have all the detached elements for the bugs finished, just have to put them on when I get the cartouche border done.