Last night, driven by a mad desire to add more beads to Holi's wings, I stitched long lines of metallics instead over the arrow centers and between each arrow. I used my blue/green Kreinik #4 braid over the medium and dark green areas and a strand of gold Accentuate over the lime green portions. Never got around to adding the beads as now the wings don't need them.
I think you'll find that if you run wild on one section of a canvas, you'll probably need to run wild on the rest to make it look good. My wings didn't have enough sparkle to hold their own with the rest of the piece. There are exceptions, of course. You might have a central section with sparkle and the rest of the piece doesn't have shine to focus attention but in this case, Holi's wings needed a bit more Omph. Metallics work well for that.
Jane/Chilly Hollow
Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow
