Halo on the Way

As you can see, I've made a lot of progress on the Blue Angel Byzantine Icon from Designing Women. I decided the white wing tips brought out the blues of the rest of the design and looked better overall than the blue Kreinik wing tips I test-stitched yesterday. It can be awfully hard to decide these things. Kreinik brought shine to the party but the deciding factor that made me go with white wing tips was that this piece when made into an ornament will be seen from a good distance. The white wings really added contrast that made the angel more noticable, especially when hanging on a Christmas tree among lights and other ornaments.

I had all the Kreinik I'd pulled out, though, so I tent stitched the rest of the top and bottom corners with it. It looks very dense next to the ligher blue ribbon floss and adds weight to the decorative arch the angel stands under. It is less impressive in the corners but I haven't put the border around this yet. I'll use gold Kreinik for that the same way I did for the Red Madonna piece.

Can you see I've added crystal beads to the spaces between the pairs of wing stitches and started attaching them to the outside of the halo? I've run into a snag with the white pearls that came with these two canvases. I planned to use all them on this piece in the white painted spots but the eye of my beading needle is too big. It won't go through the pearl holes! Today I'll hunt out a thinner thread to attach them with and a smaller sized needle. If that doesn't work, I'll improvize. Don't worry, those pearls WILL get stitched. LOL

Once I finish the halo, attach the pearls and do the final gold border, the Blue Angel will also be finished. I will then talk in detail about finishing them. I'm going to use the same technique to finish them that we are all using for the pet guardian angels we are stitching for the ANG Auction. I deliberately didn't talk about that when I was finishing six angels in a row. That would have been too depressing! But now I'll go over how I am finishing ornaments. It is not really quick but it is durn easy.

Even I can do it!

Jane/Chilly Hollow
Archived Yahoo 360 postings at http://profiles.yahoo.com/chillyhollow