January Dragonfly

Although this post is seriously overdue the block was done in January and finished on time.  March and April won't be but I will get to them soon.  The good news is that we have gotten a lot done on our new home (still plenty to do.)  My studio is coming along nicely,  I am sure it will be an ever evolving thing but hopefully it will get to a more finished state soon.

If you read my Following the Inspiration series you saw the ideas that lead up to this piece and pictures that show what the whole piece will look like at least as far as the overall design.

Each of the blocks for this year are five inches square.  They will all be done using Zentangles in pen and beads from Artbeads.com that I got from their Blogging For Beads program.  I reviewed the beads that I am using in Part 8 of my Inspiration series and here in my main blog.

If you are interested in seeing more photos you can visit my Web Gallery.  I will also be posting photos occasionally on my new Facebook page.  If you are interested in becoming friends due to this blog please put BJP in the request (Thanks).

Here you can see the basics of the block.  This is the main part of my dragonfly,  the rest of him will be on the block above and below in the finished piece.  I have already inked in the lyrics on the blocks before I cut them into the 12 blocks.

Here you can see the beginning of the pen zentangling.  This fabric is a bit more course than the fabric I used on my other fabric zentangle but I am getting more used to that.  The really fun thing is figuring out how best to  incorporate the beads into the zentangles so they look like they belong together.

This far I have used some Jet/Picasso Daggers which are really cool looking (it hard to see all of the detail and variation in this photo) and some Jet AB Glass Roundels which add to the look of the dragonfly eyes.

I started the body section by figuring out where I wanted the beads and then designed a tangle to go with it so that they would look incorporated.  In some case I will be adding beads first and then tangling around them and other cases like this I will add the beads afterwords so that it is easier to tangle.

Here I have added the Jet w/ Picasso  and Crystal w/ Dark Picasso  10 mm x 10 mm lentil beads.  In this tangle they look sort of like the center of flowers.

Here you can see that I added some additional small circles to the body's tangle.  Here I have started to add more tangling.  Here I have done my first section that has no beads which I will include here and there.  The head has Toho Bead Round Hybrid 8/0s in Jet/Picasso (are we sensing that I like this finish?)

The other seed beads are from the Amber Blues Toho bead mix.  I can already tell that I am going to love the mixes I got  since they have bugles, 8/0s, 11/0s, and 15/0s in them in multiple colors.  Gives me a lot of choices.

This is January's block finished.  Here I have added the border of the piece along the left (the head will extend beyond the border.  The lower section of the body uses 1.5 mm cubes in Transparent Smoky Topaz AB.  I love the baby cubes for bead embroidery, it gives a very neat look.  It is especially good for using with the zentangling since there are several tangles that incorporate small squares in the design.

I will try to get Februaries block up with in the next week and hopefully I will get to March's block soon.

Disclosure...As a reviewer of products at Artbeads.com, I receive the Glass Beads above free of charge. I have been asked to review these products and give my honest opinion of the products...positive or negative. I am not being compensated by Artbeads.com for my endorsement as it pertains to the products received and reviewed.