on eBay this week!

Lil Mermaid in her Grotto

The first week of Autumn has arrived! It seems too soon~ I am not sure I want summer to be over just yet. School has finally started here, and its even more hectic now than it was over summer. Where is my quiet time???? I am beginning to wonder if I will even remember what that means in a few months....

I have been working a little here and there on my casket,  when I can get the time. I started out planning to work the front and back panels at the same time, starting with the clouds at the top of each panel. Well. Well. 

I am still amazed, at how a little bunch of innocent enough CLOUDS.....totally kicked my tuccas....over. and over. and over again. I worked and ripped out that blasted bunch of clouds on my back panel at least five times, with some parts more than that. By the time I called them done, I was, and still am...so sick of blasted clouds I don't even want to look at the ones on the front panel.

So after the clouds straight from Satin himself(oddly enough I wanted them to be stormy clouds...not happy clouds)...I have been working on the two trees I have on my back panel.  I bet you can't guess how many beads is in this little bushy tree.....not including the trunk.....

O.K. I am getting sidetracked, which is usual for me lately~ anyways, what does this have to do with the thread palette set  I have on eBay this week?  I drafted the front panel of my casket to include the mermaid and grotto from an unfinished picture at the Cooper Hewitt Museum. I love this little mermaid~ she is so happy and full of life, with her little fishy friends swimming along with her while she combs her hair. The original is unworked, so I have been thinking about what colors I am going to use, and that gave me the idea to make her into a thread palette, so I could play with fun happy colors and see how they work together.

The palette itself is a figured maple, and this time, I carved the clamshell, instead of leaving it flat. I really love how it came out. I  used quartersawn sycamore for the three thread winders~ there is a snail, also from the Cooper Hewitt panel, a little baby clamshell and a fish. If you would like to see them, you can find them on eBay this week, here