As you see, I did get some things done yesterday besides shoveling slush off a driveway that is 3/10 of a mile long.
I took out the green metallic on her bodice and tried the silver of her halo but it wasn't right either. The best looking option seemed to be to lay done long stitches in the Tiara which mixes green and gold and blue. If it looks good, it's right so there we are.
The fish has no eyes yet (they go in on top) but she does have a head and fin. The instructions had pink and rose for the colors for this area and I stuck with those colors as they look great with the blues and greens fo the clothing and wings. I used Trebizond silk which is a fat silk perle for these areas. The light pink is Duchesse Rose #511 and the deep rose is Gillyflower #429. Doesn't Trebizond have beautiful color names?
I stitched a scattering of cross stitches at the base of the fish's neck in both pink and rose to make bumps for her scales. I learned that the pink cross stitches didn't show up when I tent stitched around the XSes with my pale pink, so I put a tent stitch on top of the pale pink XSes with my Kreinik silver #4005. That looks nice and adds a bit of silver to go with the silver halo this pet guardian angel wears. The fins on her head and under her chin had skip tent in the rose Gillyflower color and I filled in the empty spaces with peach beads from SJ Designs. (#779) These beads are faceted and sparkle a great deal, making the fins look a bit wet. Oddly the peach of the beads looks good with the rose silk while light pink beads did not. More color magic I guess! You simply cannot be certain that a thread that looks great before you use it will look great when you put it in your design. The same thing is true for beads.
The fin is in all tent stitches.
I have a lot more background to do but I hope to treat myself by stitching her eye tonight.
Jane/Chilly Hollow
Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow
