Now What?

I love this scene from the end of Finding Nemo:

Take a minute and watch the full video. It's worth a laugh, I promise you.

Very often during my design process, I start to feel like those fish in the bags. I start to play with the beads, things are humming along smoothly, and then I just...stop. I have a very pretty little snippet of beadwork or a component or something, but it sits there on my table, looking up at me, and asking, "Now what?"

You see, I've got these two very pretty little motifs that I made using some Twins and SuperDuos. (Ever since I got that ginormous box of Twins from Preciosa, I've been in two-holed-seed-bead-heaven.) So many possibilities! The stitches! The accents! The dimensions!

The gold and pearl piece on the left was born out of the piece on the right, which was born out of my initial experiments with the Twins using flat circular peyote stitch. I started the piece on the right with the intention of it being flat, but since I used SuperDuos instead of Twins, the spacing was just a tiny bit different, which gave it some dimension. And what do I do with a piece that wants to be three-dimensional?

I give it even more dimension by topping it with a spike bead.

(I do have to give a great big shout-out thank you to my friend Perry down at York Beads in New York City - he sent me the lovely cream colored druks that I used in the pointy piece.)

So, what was the point of all of this? (Pardon the pun.) Oh, right...I've finished the pretty little motif, and now what?

Obviously, I've got to chain them together somehow so that they can be worn, either as a necklace or a bracelet. But for some reason, the thought of designing a flat chain with the Twins and SuperDuos is just, well, scary.

This is where I'll probably back off for a little while and let the creative juices in my head do their thing. Or maybe I'll just sit down with the beads at lunch and a short piece of thread and see what the beads themselves want to do.

And after I get these all figured out and photographed and get instructions written down, maybe a new eBook? (After I get the bezel eBook finished in all my spare time, right?)