Designing in Pieces!

Have you ever designed a piece of beadwork in stages over time? That's what I did with my latest tutorial;

"Tila Magic"

Of course, from the beginning, it was never my intention to do this.  When I got the idea for this project, all I really knew is that I wanted to design a choker/necklace using tila beads. Coming up with the netted base of the necklace was indeed the easy part of this design. 

  Once I had that completed, I was completely stumped as to what to do next. I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to incorporate the tila beads or how to proceed  with building the necklace, so it lay on my bead mat staring blankly at me for literally something like four months.     Ridiculous!! I know, right? But what else can you do when you hit a barrier like that other than rip it out and perhaps begin again.  Well, I chose to let it lie, as ripping out netting is not my idea of having fun anytime soon... lol.  Every time I sat down to bead something else I saw it looking up at me and begging for an answer to the question, "When will you figure me out?"

  Like any problem, that you put on the back burner to be solved later, I knew that while the answer escaped me at the moment, eventually, a solution would present itself to me, and indeed, it did.
  I knew in my mind that whatever I came up with, I wanted it to be fairly simple and basic. Sometimes, simple is best.  The component I designed is just that... simple and basic and easy to put together. The necklace contains five components all total, so quick to bead as well.

 After beading the tila components and attaching them to the base, I felt pretty pleased with how it was all shaping up. But something was still missing for me. It seemed a little on the plain side for my taste and I knew I would have to do some kind of embellishing to truly  be happy with it.

  Overall, I was hoping the piece would have a vintage styling to it, so I came up with the peyote edging and the crystal drops that hang off of the base.  I used a teal colored 15 for the peyote edging and crystals that were a crystal/gold/teal combination, in order to bring out the teal color of the tila beads.

  What's the moral of this story? The next time you have a project that you get stumped on, perhaps you should do what I did and just put in on the back burner for however long and let it simmer awhile until that magic resolution pops up!!