Winter Enchantment

I would think that in a poll of "What is your favorite season?"  Winter would probably be the least favorite.  Living in Northern Western New York, one needs to come to terms with Winter.  I'm still working on that. 

One of the things that has opened my eyes to the beauty of winter is the never-ending various shapes of trees.  Without leaves to cover the branches, the sheer number of branches on a single tree  and the odd angles at which they sometimes grow is fascinating to me.   I decided to try to capture that beauty in beads using just a tiny bit of the multitude of choices offered through Artbeads.com

I was looking to pick out some materials I've never worked with before, and Artbeads offers a ton of options.   

Some copper tubes in 20 mm and 12 mm lengths make up some of the branches.  I was a little concerned the edges would be sharp and break my thread, but they are finished very well and not a single broken thread.  Nice!

I've always wanted to incorporate chain into my beading and this project lent itself to that thought pretty well.  This particular chain is very fine and has such a nice draping quality, I felt bad tacking it down!  It would make a great fringe.

I thought these laser cut wood links would make for an interesting element on the tree trunk.  Kind of like a knot in the side of the tree.  They are adorable and so detailed.  I can't decide which wood I like the best; maple, cherry or walnut, so I used them all. . . . 

Filling in with my favorite Toho hybrid seed beads (size 11 and 8) in that wonderful Matte Apollo shade, finished up my naked tree.  These beads have such a cool color to them and are very uniform in size and shape. 

In addition to beading the entire background in various shades of white and crystal beads, my original thought was to use the beaded buttons I made and stack them like a snowman, but they were too large and over powered my tree.  I made up the smaller sized buttons and the outcome was just downright scary  (Nightmare before Christmas, anyone???)

So, I'm not sure what the background is going to look like. . . . .

 looks like a snow drift has developed so far.. . . .  

~Bead Happy and Often~

  FTC Disclosure:

The chain, wood links, and Toho seed bead were provided free of charge from Artbeads in exchange for my unbiased review of the products.