My Son

Ok, now here is a picture of the completed project I did with a photo of my son. I used Peyote stitch and kevlar thread and quite a few colors of Delica seed beads. I am very proud of this project as well. It took about 4 months with starts and stops. I used approximately 90 different colors.

Basically I made a palette based on the beads I had and then I bought more beads that I thought best represented skin tones, including both lighter and darker than I thought I needed. I have a couple of the delica sample cards and used that to choose which ones to try and looked at them in person at my local bead shop. Then I plugged those into Bead Creator software and I just played around with those that I liked best. I am not too sure about the greens in the shadows, but overall it looks pretty good… I just try not to analyze the individual colors too much, or I drive myself crazy…. Sometimes it helps to step back and cross your eyes and look at the pattern….. or just from the corner of your vision so that the colors that are in the pattern can blend like they would in real life or if you were using paint. Does that make sense? I did take Danni’s apart because there was just one color that was off and you couldn’t really tell until a few rows were stitched. I did the same thing with Eddie’s, thankfully, with Peyote stitch you can take a few rows apart and redo or put back together, I guess that is one of my favorite things about the stitch. And on this piece there is a spot below his mouth that I may go back and change… And now looking back on it I have no idea why I did not get rid of the partial date stamp on the pattern, wouldn’t you know I stitched it right in… a project is never truly done J

I apologize for the scan, it is darker than the actual finished piece, but I haven’t perfected taking photos of my pieces, I usually end up with a glare or its too dark. And of course different monitors show the colors differently too. I have framed the two portraits and they are hanging in my living room. When I sit on the couch and look at them I think they colors are great… the real problem came when trying to pick out a color for the matt….. I spent an entire evening just trying to decide what looked best and still matched the other stuff in my living room…. J