Last night I worked on trimming the edge of Surfin Santa. It's about 2/3 finished now but it is slow going as I am doing a stitch in every little hole and sometimes have to reinforce a stitch that didn't end up exactly where I wanted it. But I am making progress.
Since more snow was predicted for last night and today, I hit the grocery store yesterday and did a few other errands that ordinarily would wait until the weekend. Luckily one of the errands took me very close to the bead store. I took along my package of threads I'm using on the Kimberly laying tool case and choose beads to edge the design. The photo above shows my purchases. I already had the lovely Sundance and Mill Hill beads on the right side but added larger beads from Potomac Bead Company which are on the left and under the canvas.
http://www.potomacbeads.com/
I mostly choose shades of peach, pink and cinnamon but I did pick up some square sage green beads that might be a nice contrast for the edging and also bought some violet beads because I couldn't resist the color. They'll go into my stash to be used for something else.
The original model used triangular-shaped beads around the edge but although the Potomac Bead Company had a ton of beads of all sorts, I didn't see any in that shape that looked good with my canvas, so I will try using the larger drops instead mixed with size 11 and size 8 beads. I also bought two cat's eye beads, one pink and one tan, which are on the canvas at the base of the darker laying tool. They'll be part of the closure, although I haven't found a closure bead yet that I like. So there is more shopping in my future but there's another bead store 30 miles east of me and the crafts emporiums also carry large beads for jewelry making.
I'll dream about how to use these beads on my laying tool case while I continue to finish the edge of Surfin Santa today. I'm not doing much show shoveling for a while as we got the light dry snow that will just blow around in the 35 mph winds that are predicted. Silly to shovel snow that will blow right back!
Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow
Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com
Archived Yahoo 360 postings at http://profiles.yahoo.com/chillyhollow
