Hand Beaded Details

Beaded dress strap

 This is not a very good picture, but I added bead clusters to the nude strap of my bridesmaid dress. 

 close up

 The dress is hemmed and almost finished

 I think I want to do something about the way it kicks out slightly on the left with all the gathers...

But I don't really know how to fix this besides holding it like in the picture above.

Beaded peacock feather detail 

 First I drew out a pattern and stitched it to the netting I'm using as a backing.

 Then I  added iron on interfacing to the "eye" of the peacock feather where most of the beading will be for a little support.

So far this is what I've got.  It is much more sparkly in person.  I may do just the center of the feather on the netting and interfacing and then attach it to the dress and add the feather "whisps" straight onto the dress fabric.

This is all new to me and it's hard to find beading tutorials online for adding beaded details to a dress, so I'm kinda making it up as I go along...

Finally a new painting!

Collage, mixed-media Doggie Portrait.  

Repo, Austin's dog.

I started by collecting items that reminded me of Repo for the background.  His name is collaged into the background along with a puzzle piece, a chinese watch dog, a dragonfly, and a few hand made (years ago) paper leaves.  I painted the background first and then started painting Repo's face, layer by layer.  The leaves and dragonfly are actually the last layer applied on top of the painting with collage glue.

close up