Well, I just couldn't help myself! I had to work on my May page so that I could put all my pages together. I finished it in one week.... I can hardly believe it myself! Went on a road trip with my husband and spent time beading in the car while he was fishing. It really gave me some time with the design. I went through a lot of stuff with this one. It was really fun to do the petals as they were shaded in the photo. Tricky because my inclination is to do each one identically, but the shadows were different! It was an amazing discipline to work through that!
I started out doing just the pale green accents that created a star. I used size 15 beads for this so it would be a little more delicate than the normal 11's I use. The five "legs" reminded me of a starfish. I chose to do the sides of the star arms in bugles set at an angle. This created an even more starfish look! It took on such texture and then I decided to use the beads in swoops and swirls and rainbows in random order to fill in. I liked the tiny moon faces and decided to use one in each of the five sections.
It was interesting to use the mauve beads along with the really white opaque ones. Then adding the size 15 pink ones that seemed to be partly faded, but that gave even more depth without having to work at it! The addition of curves and swirls was fun to fill in the spaces.
After finishing the petals, I debated about what to do in the center..... I wanted the look of a deep center of the trumpet of a petunia, but didn't know quite how to do that. After going through my stash of beads and looking for ANY bead that is the limey-yellowy-greeny color. I was surprised to find a cupped flower bead that I could use for the very center. Then I had to fill in more around that. I found a size 8 VERY limey bead that I used as the base of my stack, and added three size 15 beads that match the original five lines to loop on top of it. I am really pleased with the way this looks -- the bright lime color is kinda filtered by the other beads, but add a little brightness!
