I'm Back - Winter bead embroidery projects

It's been five months since my last post. So much for keeping a current journal of projects, classes, kid activities and life... It's been quiet on the Bogate front during this time. I only did one craft fair at Christmas time, I haven't taught any classes and I haven't really been making that much. That's not really true, but I consider the things that I've made to be more "playing" rather than working. But then again, I am very lucky to consider most of the work I do as playtime.

For a non-TV watcher, I've been watching a lot of TV this fall and winter. We made the big mistake of renting the DVD of the series called "24" It is so good (and addictive) that we have watched all five of the previous seasons now. Season 6 just began and I know what I'll be doing now on Monday nights.

One thing that I do alot of when watching TV is beading. I just embroidered these three hearts that I'll make into pins for Valentines Day. My favorite is the first. I usually just wing it when I do bead embroidery. I look at it kind of like trying to put a puzzle together. With this heart, I actually first drew a rough sketch. While I didn't really follow it exactly, it is pretty close to my plan. Since I like this first one the best, maybe there is something said for planning ahead.

I like the stripe effect on this one. Interesting when one row is with 8s and the other row is with 11s. It creates a nice texture in addition to the color change.
In this heart, I used a mix of all size 11 beads. The beads are laid out in various circles. The smallest circle is on the top left and is the most obvious. The other areas just show parts of circles and aren't as effective. I think next time I'll have the center of the circle in the middle of the heart and just have one circle radiate out.
(You can see the pencil outline of the arc I drew for the lowest circle segment).

These hearts have been fun. I hope to come up with a variety of samples and techniques. It would make a nice class project.